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BALLOONS 

ELIZABETH  BIBESCO 


BALLOONS 


BY 

ELIZABETH  BIBESCO 

Author  of  "I  Have  Only  Myself  to  Blame,"  etc. 


NEW  xHr  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Copyriffht,  1922^ 
By  George  H.  Doran  Company 


BALLOONS.  I 


PUNTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


($003 


CONTENTS 

VAGB 

I    Haven 9 

To  Clarence  Day,  Jr. 

II     Two  Paris  Episodes 21 

To  Anthony  Asquitk 

I ;   THE  STORY  OF  A  COAT 
II :   BALLOONS 

III  Courtship 27 

IV  "Do  You  Remember  ..  .r 29 

To  Leslie  Hartley 

V     The  Martyr 37 

To  H.G.  Wells 

VI    A  Motor 53 

To  Alice  Longworth 

VII     The  Masterpiece 60 

To  Harold  Child 

VIII     Tea  Time 67 

To  Sylvester  Gates 

IX    The  End 78 

X     Misunderstood 83 

To  John  Maynard  Keynes 

XI     Counterpoint 92 

To  the  Marchese  Giovanni  Visconti  Venosta 

XII      ViLLEGIATURA 102 

To  Marcel  Proust 

V 


19109-1 


VI  CONTENTS 


FAGK 

XIII  AuLD  Lang  Syne 132 

To  Harold  Nicolson 

XIV  Two  Taxi  Drives 147 

To  Paul  Morand 
i:  sunshine 

11:    LAMPS 

XV    A  Touch  of  Spring     ..,,,,,     155 
To  W.  Y.  Turner 

XVI    FiDO  and  Ponto 161 


BALLOONS 


BALLOONS 

I 

HAVEN 

[To  Clarence  Day,  Jr.] 

YOU  should  only,"  we  are  told,  "wear  white  in 
early  youth  and  old  age.  It  is  very  becoming 
with  a  fresh  complexion  or  white  hair.  When  you 
no  longer  feel  as  young  as  you  were,  other  colours 
are  more  flattering.  Also,  you  should  avoid  bright 
lights  and  worry." 

Here,  the  beauty  specialist  reminds  you  of  the 
specialist  who  says  in  winter,  "Avoid  wet  feet  and 
germs."  In  spite  of  both,  we  are  still  subjected  to 
sunshine  and  anxiety  and  rain  and  microbes. 

But  there  are  risks  which  the  would-be  j^oung  can 
and  should  avoid.  Surely  Miss  Wilcox  ought  to 
have  known  better  than  to  flop  down  on  the  grass 
with  an  effort  and  a  bump,  clasping  (with  some  dif- 
ficulty) her  knees  because  Vera,  who  is  sixteen,  slim 
and  lithe,  with  the  gawky  grace  of  a  young  colt,  had 
made  such  an  obvious  success  of  the  operation ! 

It  is  better  not  to  sit  on  the  grass  after  thirty 

9 


lO  BALLOONS 


when  sprawling  at  all  is  difficult,  let  alone  sprawling 
gracefully. 

Poor  Miss  Wilcox!  At  seventeen  she  had  been 
a  pretty,  bouncing  girl  with  bright  blue  eyes,  bright 
pink  cheeks  and  brighter  yellow  hair.  All  the  young 
men  of  the  neighbourhood  had  kissed  her  in  con- 
servatories or  bushes  and  to  each  in  turn,  she  had 
answered,  "Well,  I  never  I" 

Then  an  era  of  intellectual  indifference  to  the 
world  set  in.  She  read  Milton  in  a  garret  and  ate 
very  little.  When  addressed,  she  gave  the  impres- 
sion of  being  suddenly  dragged  down  from  some  sub- 
lime pinnacle  of  thought.  This  was  the  period  of 
absent-mindedness,  of  untidiness,  of  unpunctuality, 
for  she  was  convinced  that  these  three  ingredients 
compose  the  spiritual  life.  But  it  was  not  a  suc- 
cess. True,  her  cheeks  lost  their  roses,  but  without 
attaining  an  interesting  transparent  whiteness  and 
her  figure  became  angular,  rather  than  thin.  Cold 
food,  ugly  clothes  and  enforced  isolation  began  to 
lose  their  charms  and  Miss  Wilcox  abandoned  the 
intellectual  life. 

She  discovered  that  men  were  her  only  interest — 
probably  she  had  always  known  it.  Even  the  curate, 
who  was  like  a  curate  on  the  stage,  was  glorified 
into  an  adventurous  possibility  from  the  mere  fact 
that  he  belonged  to  that  strange,  tropical  species — 
the  other  sex. 


HAVEN  11 

Unfortunately,  Miss  Wilcox,  who  was  practical 
and  orderly,  knew  just  "what  men  liked  in  a^ 
woman."  It  was,  it  appeared,  necessary  to  be  bright 
— relentlessly  bright,  with  a  determined,  irrelevant 
cheerfulness  which  no  considerations  of  appropriate- 
ness could  check  and  it  was  necessary  to  have  "some- 
thing to  say  for  yourself"  which  in  Miss  Wilcox's 
hands,  meant  a  series  of  pert  tu  quoques  of  the 
"you're  another"  variety.  Her  two  other  axioms, 
"Don't  let  them  see  that  you  care  for  them"  and 
"feed  the  beasts,"  were  alas  I  never  put  to  the  test 
as  no  man  had  ever  considered  the  possibility  of  be- 
ing loved  by  Miss  Wilcox  and  the  feeding  stage  had, 
in  consequence,  never  been  reached. 

Nevertheless,  in  defence  of  her  theses.  Miss  Wil- 
cox was  rough-toughed  in  public,  while  in  private, 
she  studied  recipes  and  articles  on  cooking.  As 
hope  gradually  began  to  give  way  to  experience, 
Miss  Wilcox  came  to  the  conclusion  that  she  fright- 
ened men  off.  They  regarded  her,  she  imagined,  as 
cold  and  indifferent  and  unapproachable.  "I  don't 
cheapen  myself,"  she  would  say,  forgetting  her  con- 
servatory days.  In  her  heart  of  hearts,  she  imag- 
ined herself  in  humble  surrender,  laying  her  strong 
personality  at  the  feet  of  a  still  stronger  one  and 
being  gently  lifted  up  on  to  a  pedestal.  It  was  curi- 
ous, she  thought,  that  her  wonderful,  unique  gift  of 
tenderness  should  go  unperceived.    But  how  is  one 


12  BALLOONS 


to  show  that  one  is  tender?  It  is  so  difficult  for  a 
maiden  lady,  living  alone.  She  saw  visions  of  a 
huge  man  with  whimsical,  smiling  eyes,  who  after 
seeing  her  two  or  three  times  would  call  at  her  cot- 
tage. He  would  stand  in  the  door  and  simply  say, 
"Ellen,"  and  she  would  put  her  head  on  his  shoul- 
der and  cry  gently  while  he  stroked  her  hair.  "Does 
my  loving  you  make  you  sad,  little  one^"  he  would 
say,  and  she  would  answer,  "No,  no,  they  are  tears 
of  happiness.'* 

Miss  Wilcox  thought  it  would  be  delightful  to  be 
called  "little  one."  And  then,  rather  nervously  and 
tremulously,  she  would  murmur,  "I  am  afraid  I  am 
not  very  beautiful,"  and  he  would  laugh  a  deep, 
joyous  laugh  and  say,  "To  me,  you  are  the  most 
beautiful  woman  in  the  world." 

But  it  never  happened.  Even  the  chinless  curate, 
whose  voice  without  consonants  gave  the  effect  of 
an  intoning  bumble-bee,  never  took  advantage  of 
her  suggestions  (frequently  repeated)  that  he  should 
drop  in  to  tea. 

She  tried  to  learn  lawn-tennis  and  chess,  but  driv- 
ing a  ball  into  a  net  and  studying  problems  in  the 
Sunday  papers  becomes  very  monotonous.  It  was 
extraordinary  how  little  provision  life  seemed  to 
have  made  for  superior  people  with  fastidious  tastes, 
whereas  an  empty  head  and  a  pretty  face  conquers 
the  world!     Miss  Wilcox  was  very  proud  of  the 


HAVEN  13 

epigram,  "empty  heads  and  pretty  faces."  She  used 
it  frequently,  more  in  sorrow  than  in  anger.  Vera 
was  an  excellent  example.  She  was  incapable  of 
"conducting  a  conversation,"  she  never  read  a  book, 
but  simply  because  her  eyes  sparkled  and  somehow 
or  other,  she  always  reminded  you  of  a  Shepperson 
drawing,  she  was  invariably  surrounded  by  a  host 
of  adorers.  She  was  indifferent  to  the  axioms, 
"boys  will  be  boys"  and  "gentlemen  are  different." 
In  her  philosophy,  "girls  would  be  boys"  and  the 
difference  between  the  sexes  was  simply  one  of  what 
you  might  and  might  not  do. 

"A  positive  savage,"  Miss  Wilcox  would  explain 
and  then,  "You  should  be  more  womanly,  dear;  men 
like  a  womanly  woman."  And  Vera's  eyes  would 
sparkle  maliciously,  for  men  undoubtedly  did  like 
Vera. 

I  do  not  know  at  what  moment  in  life,  if  ever,  we 
realise  that  we  are  neither  George  Sands  nor  Juliets. 
Of  course,  if  we  are  not  beautiful,  we  recognise 
early  that  beauty  is  nothing.  What  are  features'? 
The  only  thing  that  matters  is  to  have  charm  and 
expression.  Then  comes  that  horrible  gnawing 
doubt  of  our  own  magnetism.  Is  it  possible  that, 
though  we  are  not  lovely,  we  are  not  irresistible 
either  ■?  That  we  will  have  to  go  through  life  be- 
longing neither  to  the  triumphantly  beautiful  nor  to 
the  triumphantly  ugly?  Miss  Wilcox  knew  that  she 


14  BALLOONS 


was  not  exactly  clever.  But  after  all,  what  is  pret- 
tiness  and  "men  don't  like  clever  women."  So  she 
consoled  herself  with  the  thought  that  though  her 
manner  "permitted  no  liberties,"  the  warm  tender- 
ness of  her  true  nature  must  be  apparent  to  the 
really  discerning. 

Poor  Miss  Wilcox  I  She  had  tried  brightness  and 
common-sense,  Milton  and  lawn-tennis,  the  arch  and 
the  aloof.  She  would  have  liked  to  have  been  se- 
ductive and  a  little  wicked,  but  she  had  found  it 
easier  to  be  dignified  and  very  good.  Easier  but 
no  more  satisfactory.  Evidently  charm  was  a 
strange,  mysterious  thing,  for  which  there  was  no 
recipe.  A  dangerous  force  governing  many  things 
and  subject  to  no  law. 

Every  one  was  kind  to  Miss  Wilcox.  Lady  Mary 
(Vera's  mother)  was  always  asking  her  to  picnics 
and  lawn-tennis,  parties  and  festivities  of  all  sorts. 
On  these  occasions,  Sir  Harry  invariably  chaffed  her 
about  the  curate,  little  knowing  that  his  foolish  jokes 
were  a  source  of  exquisite  and  almost  guilty  pleasure 
to  her.  Was  it,  she  wondered,  altogether  fair  to  let 
him  think  that  Mr.  Simpson  loved  her?  But  she  did 
enjoy  it  so  much,  the  nervous  agonising  sense  of 
expectancy  and  then  the  sudden  hot  blush.  "Their 
little  secret,"  Sir  Harry  called  it  and  though,  of 
course,  it  was  very  wicked  of  her  to  let  him  con- 
tinue under  a  misapprehension,  it  was  so  difficult  to 


HAVEN  15 

clear  the  matter  up,  as,  the  more  she  protested,  the 
more  confused  she  became,  the  more  he  was  bound 
to  think  that  there  was  something  in  it. 

Poor  Miss  Wilcox,  battling  with  her  conscience 
when  Mr.  Simpson's  passion  was  an  invention  of 
Vera's  to  whom  old  maids  and  curates  were  simply 
stage  properties.  Vera  with  her  long  legs  and  her 
laughing  eyes  and  her  happy,  unimaginative  youth 
— how  was  she  to  know  that  the  Simpsons  of  life 
stand  for  romance  and  mystery  and  longings  un- 
achieved*? To  some  people  the  impossible  is  im- 
possible. One  fine  day  they  wake  up  in  the  morn- 
ing knowing  that  they  will  never  hold  the  moon 
in  their  hands  and  with  the  certainty,  perfect  peace 
descends  on  them. 

Miss  Wilcox  was  not  like  that.  She  couldn't 
settle  down  to  decorating  the  church  and  organising 
village  entertainments.  She  woke  up  every  morn- 
ing sure  that  something  was  going  to  happen  and 
went  to  bed  every  night  dissatisfied  in  proportion 
to  her  confidence. 

And  then,  quite  close  together,  two  things  did  hap- 
pen. Miss  Wilcox  was  left  a  small  fortune  and 
Vera  became  engaged  to  be  married. 

The  wedding,  of  course,  was  a  great  dramatic 
event.  The  preparations  engulfed  everybody. 
What  flowers  should  the  triumphal  arches  be  made 
of  and  were  the  fair  or  the  dark  bridesmaids  to  be 


l6  BALLOONS 


considered  in  the  bridesmaids'  dresses?  Miss  Wil- 
cox gave  her  advice  freely  and  tied  cards  on  to  pres- 
ents but  she  felt  unaccountably  depressed.  This, 
of  course,  was  because  dear  little  Vera  whom  she 
had  known  since  a  child,  whom  she  had  loved  as  a 
child,  was  leaving  them  and  plunging  into  this 
strange,  unknown  adventure.  What  an  uncertain 
thing  marriage,  what  an  elusive  thing  happiness! 
At  nights  she  would  dream  of  white  satin  figures 
shrouded  in  white  tulle  veils,  of  shy,  passionate 
bridegrooms  and  shy,  radiant  brides.  Sometimes 
she  would  see  Vera's  face  and  sometimes  her  own 
and  often  in  the  morning,  she  would  find  her  pillow 
wet.  "It  will  be  you  and  Simpson  next,"  Sir  Harry 
teased  her.  But  somehow  the  remark  no  longer 
pleased  her  and  she  no  longer  blushed. 

And  then,  one  day  she  couldn't  bear  it  any  more. 
Without  saying  a  word  to  any  one  she  went  to  Lon- 
don. A  thick  orange  fog  greeted  her,  a  wonderful, 
mysterious  fog,  creating  immense  prehistoric  silhou- 
ettes, a  fog  which  freed  you  from  old  accustomed 
sights  and  sounds  so  that  your  individuality  seemed 
at  last  to  be  released  and  to  belong  exclusively  to 
you. 

Gratefully  Miss  Wilcox  accepted  this  gift  of  pri" 
vacy.  London  belonged  to  her,  there  were  no  pry- 
ing eyes.  Slowly  she  walked  along  the  pavement 
peering  into  shop  windows.     It  was  difficult  to  see 


HAVEN  17 

anything.  At  last  she  distinguished  a  blur  of  gold 
and  jewels.  She  walked  on  and  then  back  again. 
She  stood  still.  Her  heart  was  in  her  mouth.  Reso- 
lutely she  pushed  the  door  open.  The  brightness 
blinded  her,  the  sudden  warmth  made  her  feel  dizzy. 
Weakly  she  sat  on  a  chair.  A  sympathetic  salesman 
asked  her  if  he  could  do  anything  for  her.  "No, 
thank  you,"  she  murmured  faintly,  "if  I  might  sit 
here  a  moment." 

Gradually  she  recovered  and  walked  out  again. 
The  fog  was  thicker  than  ever.  The  traffic  had 
stopped.  People  bumped  into  her  with  muttered 
apologies.  Hesitatingly,  wearily,  she  walked  along. 
At  last,  she  reached  another  jeweller's.  Firmly, 
quickly  she  walked  in.  How  was  she  to  ask  for  what 
she  wanted"? 

"What  can  I  do  for  you.  Madam?* 

She  looked  up  like  a  frightened  animal. 

"I've  lost  my  wedding  ring,"  she  stammered.  "It 
was  a  broad  gold  one.  I — I  don't  want  my  husband 
to  discover  it." 

How  easy  it  was  after  all. 

The  salesman  was  very  sympathetic.  She  looked 
at  a  great  number  of  rings,  toying  with  them  in 
voluptuous  hesitation.  She  enjoyed  fingering  them. 
At  last  she  chose  one.  The  gold  band  on  her  finger 
frightened  her.  It  made  her  feel  a  strange,  different 
person,  rather  disreputable  and  quite  unlike  herself. 


l8  BALLOONS 


Miss  Wilcox  went  to  the  Ritz.  It  was,  she  felt, 
a  place  where  married  ladies  without  husbands 
would  be  neither  noticed  nor  commented  on.  There 
is,  after  all,  nothing  so  very  unusual  in  a  wedding 
ring  and  Miss  Wilcox's  appearance  did  not  arouse 
idle  and  libelous  speculations.  But  still,  she  felt 
safer  at  the  Ritz — there  is  something  so  conspicuous 
about  a  quiet  hotel. 

The  next  day  the  fog  had  been  cleared  away  and 
the  sun,  emerging  after  a  day's  rest,  sparkled  with 
refreshed  gaiety.  Miss  Wilcox,  in  deep  mourning, 
went  out  to  buy  new  black  clothes — lovely  they 
were,  intentionally,  not  accidentally  black,  filmy 
chiffons,  rippling  crepe-de-chines,  demure  cashmeres, 
severe,  perfect  tailleurs.  Here  and  there  touches  of 
snowy  crepe  gave  a  relief  suitable  to  deep  unhap- 
piness  and  her  widow's  cap,  low  on  the  forehead, 
was  the  softest  and  most  nun-like  frame  to  her  face. 
Seeing  herself  in  the  glass.  Miss  Wilcox  blushed 
with  pleasure. 

"My  husband  was  so  fond  of  clothes,"  she  mur- 
mured to  the  vendeuse  with  a  break  in  her  voice, 
"and  he  always  said  that  nothing  became  a  woman 
like  black." 

There  is  a  little  village  on  the  Seine.  An  old  grey 
church  nestles  among  the  huddling  houses.  A  pla- 
toon of  poplars  guards  the  river,  and  little  pink 


HAVEN  19 

almond  bushes  spring  out  of  patches  of  violets.  Miss 
Wilcox,  calling  herself  Mrs.  Demarest,  lives  in  a 
charming  old  house  surrounded  by  box  hedges,  paved 
paths  lead  through  beds  of  old-fashioned  sweet- 
scented  flowers,  stocks  and  wall  flowers  and  mignon- 
ette and  moss  roses,  lavender,  myrtle,  thyme  and 
sweet  geranium.  Mr.  Demarest,  it  appears,  could 
not  bear  the  wonderful  new  varieties  of  huge,  smell- 
less  blooms. 

Miss  Wilcox  has  never  gone  out  of  mourning, 
though  she  sometimes  wears  grey  and  mauve.  Her 
gracious  sweetness  has  made  her  much  beloved  in 
the  village  where  her  gentle  presence  is  loved  and 
honoured.  She  can  often  be  seen  bringing  soup  to 
some  old  invalid,  or  taking  flowers  to  the  church 
she  loves  to  decorate.  Her  charity  and  her  piety 
are  revered  by  all.  Sometimes  in  the  evening  she 
plays  a  game  of  cards  with  her  neighbours  or  chess 
with  the  cure.  It  is  known  that  a  rich  man  from 
the  adjoining  town  proposed  marriage  to  her,  but 
she  continues  to  mourn  her  late  husband  with  pro- 
found devoted  fidelity.  She  is  too  unselfish  to  force 
her  grief  on  to  others,  but  every  one  knows  that  her 
heart  is  broken.  Sometimes  she  talks  of  her  sorrow 
— very  gently,  very  uncomplainingly,  and  there  are 
always  flowers  in  front  of  the  photograph  of  her 
husband  on  her  writing  table.  He  must  have  been  a 
magnificent   man — huge,   with    whimsical    smiling 


20  BALLOONS 


eyes.  Every  one  in  the  village  feels  as  if  they  had 
known  him.  They  have  heard  so  much  about  him. 
He  had  only  seen  Miss  Wilcox  three  times  when  he 
walked  into  her  cottage.  Standing  in  the  doorway 
— "Ellen,"  he  said,  and  she  went  to  him — 

"I  suppose  I  knew  it  was  for  always,"  she  ex- 
plains gently.  "It  has  been  a  short  always  on  earth 
— but  so  happy,  so  very  happy." 

All  the  girls  of  the  village  go  to  Mrs.  Demarest 
before  they  marry.  Her  wise  counsel  and  the  ra- 
diant memory  of  her  happiness  lights  them  on  their 
way. 

"I  have  had  everything,"  she  says,  "and  now  I 
have  found  peace." 

It  is  the  severity  of  suffering  bravely  borne.  She 
has  called  her  house  "Haven." 


n 

TWO  PARIS  EPISODES 

[To  Anthony  Asquith] 

i:     THE  STORY  OF  A  COAT 

LE  PRINTEMPS  a  brule  cette  nuit."  The  news 
greeted  me  when  I  was  called.  It  had  no  spe- 
cial significance,  but  spread  through  my  semi-con- 
sciousness into  meaningless  patterns.  Then  I  woke 
up.  "Comme  c'est  terrible,"  I  said,  "quelle  chance 
que  qa.  s'est  fait  la  nuit  I"  I  saw  visions  of  leaping 
flames  and  angry  reds  reflected  in  the  sky. 

Then  I  remembered.  It  was  at  the  Printemps  that 
I  had  chosen  my  divine  coat.  They  had  promised 
faithfully  to  send  it  me  to-day.  The  loveliest  coat 
in  the  world — "fumee  de  Londres,"  the  salesman 
had  called  it,  and  in  fact,  it  was  the  colour  of  the 
purple-grey  smoke  that  ascends  in  solid  spirals  from 
factory  chimneys.  There  were  stripes  too  of  silvery 
grey  chenil  which  made  a  play-ground  for  lights  and 
shadows.  In  shape  it  was  like  an  old  print  of  a 
coachman  driving  a  four-in-hand,  long  with  a  flap- 
ping cape,  and  the  lining  was  the  colour  of  the  sky 
when  the  sun  has  set. 

21 


22  BALLOONS 


I  saw  my  coat  giving  new  life  to  the  dying  flames. 
Tongues  of  fire  were  darting  down  the  lines  of  sil- 
very grey  chenil,  greedily  eating  up  the  smoky  back- 
ground. Finally,  a  mass  of  ashes — purple-grey  like 
their  victim — was  carried  by  the  wind  into  the  un- 
known. All  day  long  my  coat  became  more  and 
more  beautiful.  The  texture  was  solid  smoke  and 
the  stripes  were  shafts  of  moonlight.  How  it  shim- 
mered through  the  mirage  of  my  regrets. 

When  I  got  home  that  afternoon  I  found  a  card- 
board box.  The  inspector  of  the  Printemps,  know- 
ing that  I  was  leaving  for  England,  had  brought 
me  a  coat  from  the  reserve  stock  which  was  not  kept 
in  the  shop.  Infinitely  touched,  my  heart  overflow- 
ing with  gratitude,  I  wrote  a  love  letter  to  the  Prin- 
temps. 

Then  I  looked  at  my  coat.  The  silvery  stripes 
turned  out  to  be  black  and  white,  giving  a  grey  ef- 
fect. The  texture  of  the  back-ground  was  not  pur- 
ple smoke,  but  rather  scratchy  wool.  Evidently  it 
was  no  longer  the  coat  of  my  sad  dreams.  In  becom- 
ing once  more  "la  creation"  of  the  Printemps  it  had 
ceased  to  be  the  creation  of  my  imagination.  Res- 
urrection is  a  dangerous  thing. 

My  coat  which  was  once  a  legend  is  a  reality 
again.  It  has  travelled  from  fairy-land  to  life.  Now 
it  is  a  symbol.  Isn't  this  the  story  of  the  Life  of 
Christ? 


TWO    PARIS    EPISODES  23 


11:      BALLOONS 

All  my  life  I  have  loved  balloons — all  balloons — 
the  heavy  English  sort,  immense  and  round,  that 
have  to  be  pushed  about,  and  the  gay,  light,  gas- 
filled  French  ones  that  soar  into  the  air  the  moment 
you  let  go  of  them.  How  well  I  remember  when  I 
was  little,  the  colossal  effort  of  blowing  up  the  dark 
red,  floppy  India  rubber  until  it  got  brighter  and 
brighter  and  more  and  more  transparent,  though  it 
always  stayed  opaque  enough  to  hold  the  promise 
of  still  greater  bigness.  And  then  the  crucial  mo- 
ment when  ambition  demanded  an  extra  puff  and  a 
catastrophe  became  ever  more  imminent. 

And  now,  when  I  suddenly  see  a  huge  bunch  of 
wonderful  bloated  tropical  grapes,  overpowering 
some  old  woman  in  the  street,  I  feel  so  happy  I  In 
Paris,  of  course,  they  are  quite  different — ^balloons 
have  much  too  much  flavour  to  be  international — 
they  are  smaller  and  lighter  in  colour  and  gayer  and 
more  reckless — they  always  look  as  if  they  were  out 
on  a  spree,  just  waiting  to  break  loose  from  the  long 
string  by  which  they  are  tied,  in  a  huge  multi-col- 
oured sunshade,  to  a  stick.  There  is  something  very 
independent  about  French  balloons — you  feel  you 
couldn't  make  a  pet  of  one. 

But  I  am  telling  you  things  you  know  already, 
instead  of  getting  on  with  my  story. 


24  BALLOONS 


It  was  the  sort  of  spring  day  when  all  the  buds 
look  like  feathers  and  the  sun  has  been  bathing  in 
milk.  I  was  walking  down  the  Champs  Elysees, 
sniffing  secret  violets  in  the  air  and  feeling  as  joyous 
as  if  the  world  were  entirely  full  of  primroses  and 
larks  and  light-hearted  passers-by  whom  I  would 
never  see  again.  In  the  distance  a  barrel  organ  be- 
came more  and  more  distinct  and  as  I  drew  nearer 
and  the  noise  grew  louder,  I  wanted  to  dance  and 
sing.  It  was  in  tune  with  my  mood.  A  symbol  of 
the  crescendo  of  living. 

And  then,  in  the  distance,  I  saw  Cousin  Emily 
crawling  towards  me  like  a  black  beetle  with  her 
half-shut  eyes  that  see  everything  except  beauty  and 
innocence.  Though  I  avoided  her  and  the  day  was 
as  lovely  as  ever,  I  had  become  conscious  that  the 
world  was  inhabited  and  that  there  were  people  who 
didn't  whistle — or  want  to  whistle — in  the  streets. 

I  tried  to  think  of  larks  and  primroses,  but  my 
thoughts  were  dragged  back  to  thick,  half-drawn  red 
curtains,  black  woolen  shawls  and  silver  photograph 
frames.  Then  I  had  an  idea.  "I  will  buy  a  bal- 
loon," I  thought.  My  spirits  rose  and  my  heart 
leapt.  Should  I  buy  a  green  one  like  a  bad  emerald, 
or  a  red  one  like  wine  and  water,  or  a  thick  bright 
yellow  one?  White  was  charming  too,  and  sailed 
up  into  the  sky  like  a  tight,  round  cloud — 

I  reached  the  Galleries  Lafayette. 


TWO    PARIS    EPISODES  2^ 

"Des  ballons,  s'il  vous  plait.  Joujoux,"  I  added. 
I  was  told  to  go  straight  on,  to  turn  to  the  right  and 
the  left,  to  go  up  three  steps  and  down  three  steps — 
but  my  mind  wandered  as  it  always  does  when  I  am 
listening  to  directions  that  I  have  to  follow.  By  an 
unseemly  scramble  I  got  into  an  over-crowded  lift. 
I  seemed  to  be  treading  on  children  and  reclining 
on  tight,  upholstered  bosoms.  At  random,  I  chose 
the  third  floor  and  found  myself  among  a  forest  of 
lamps.  Desperately  determined  not  to  risk  another 
struggle  for  the  lift,  I  tried  to  find  the  staircase.  At 
last,  after  endless  enquiries  and — it  seemed — going 
back  five  steps  for  every  three  I  had  gone  forward,  I 
reached  the  toy  department.  Breathless,  bedraggled, 
hot  and  exhausted,  I  clutched  the  arm  of  the  first 
saleswoman  I  saw.  "Des  ballons,  Madame,"  I 
gasped. 

She  looked  at  me  with  contempt,  "Les  ballons,  ca 
ne  se  vend  pas,  ca  se  dorme." 

For  a  moment  I  was  awed  by  the  aristocratic  mag- 
nificence of  balloons.  How  superb,  how  reckless  I 
Very  humbly  I  appealed  to  her, 

"Pouvez-vous,  voulez-vous  me  donner  un  bal- 
lon?" 

"Les  ballons,  ca  ne  se  doime  pas  apres  cinq 
heures,"  she  said. 

I  didn't  press  her.  How  could  I"?  By  how  many 
thousands  of  years  of  tradition  might  not  the  habits 


26  BALLOONS 


of  balloons  have  been  fixed*?  Their  lives  were  evi- 
dently strangely  and  remotely  unlike  our  lives. 
Wearily  I  walked  downstairs,  not  snubbed  but  hum- 
bled and  a  little  awed. 

Half  an  hour  later  I  was  walking  down  the 
Champ  Elysees  sniffing  at  the  secret  violets  in  the 
air.  I  had  forgotten  Cousin  Emily  and  the  world 
was  full  of  primroses  and  larks  and  light-hearted 
passers-by.  Suddenly,  at  the  other  side  of  the  street 
I  saw  a  bursting  sunshade  of  balloons,  emerald  and 
ruby,  transparent  white  and  thick,  solid  yellow,  a 
birthday  bouquet  frcxn  a  Titan  to  his  lady.  Rev- 
erently, lovingly,  I  looked  at  them,  my  heart  full  of 
joy,  but  I  did  not  cross  the  street. 


Ill 

COURTSHIP 

I  DO  love  yachting,"  she  said,  "to  see  the  sea 
change  from  aquamarines  and  diamonds  to 
sapphires  and  emeralds,  with  thick  unexpected 
streaks  of  turquoise.  To  sail  away  into  the  un- 
known, away  from  your  own  life " 

She  was  looking  dreamily  in  front  of  her  to  the 
blue  beyond  the  mimosa. 

"The  sea  is  jolly,"  he  said. 

"To  feel  that  you  are  leaving  land  behind  you 
and  your  friends  and  your  relations  and  your  duties 
and  what  are  called  your  pleasures.  To  be  free," 
she  murmured. 

"There's  nothing  like  horses,"  he  said.  "Their 
very  smell  does  you  good.  An  hour's  gallop  before 
breakfast  in  summer,  a  twenty  minutes'  run  with 
the  hounds  in  winter " 

A  week  later  they  were  engaged  to  be  married.  I 
wondered  whether  he  would  take  to  yachting  or  she 
to  riding  or  both  to  golf. 

I  didn't  see  them  for  five  years.  And  then,  I  met 
her  at  Melton.  She  had  taken  a  house  for  the  win- 
ter.   "So  he  won,"  I  reflected  to  myself. 

27 


28 


BALLOONS 


"Have  you  done  much  yachting  lately*?"  I  asked 
her. 

"Yachting?"  she  said,  "why  it's  my  idea  of  hell. 
I'm  the  worst  sailor  in  the  world.  A  sea  as  calm  as 
a  pond  finishes  me." 

"How  is  your  husband  *?"  I  murmured  weakly.  "Is 
he  coming  down  here  to  hunt?" 

"Tommy?"  she  laughed.  "Why  he's  never  known 
a  horse  from  a  cow." 


IV 

'DO  YOU  REMEMBER- 


[To  Leslie  Hartley] 

THERE  are  so  many  delightful  things  about 
being  a  bride  besides  actual  happiness,  little 
peaks  of  pleasure  that  gradually  sink  into  the  level 
of  existence,  unimportant,  all-important  things  that 
never  come  again.  To  begin  with,  there  is  your  wed- 
ding ring  which  keeps  glistening  up  at  you,  unex- 
pectedly making  such  an  absurd  difference,  not  only 
to  the  look  of  your  hand  but  to  everything  else,  as 
well.  And  there  are  your  trunks,  shiny  and  untrav- 
elled,  with  glaring  new  initials  almost  shouting  at 
you,  so  very  unlike  other  people's  battered  luggage 
with  half  obliterated  labels  sprawling  over  it. 

And  trousseau  clothes  are  quite  unlike  other 
clothes — not  prettier,  often  uglier — but  different. 
Your  shoes  and  stockings  match,  not  yet  having  be- 
gun that  uneven  race  which,  starting  from  the  same 
mole,  ends  with  a  fawn-colored  shoe  and  a  grey  blue 
stocking.  Your  hats  go  with  your  dresses  and  your 
sunshades  with  both.  You  have  an  appropriate  gar- 
ment for  all  occasions,  mstead  of  always  being — as 


30  BALLOONS 


you  once  were  and  soon  will  become  again — short 
of  something.  Altogether,  there  is  no  other  word 
for  it — you  are  equipped. 

And  then  you  feel  exhilarated  and  responsible — 
your  jewels  are  still  new  and  so  is  the  strange,  beau- 
tifully embroidered  monogram  on  your  handker- 
chiefs and  underclothes.  Also,  for  the  first  time  in 
your  life,  you  have  a  jet  evening  dress  with  a  train 
and  your  maid  calls  you  "Madam." 

Lucy  was  extremely  pleased  about  all  of  these 
things.  She  was  pleased,  too,  to  have  married  a 
foreigner,  to  be  sailing  away  into  a  new  milieu, 
where  she  would  be  surrounded  by  the  strange  ex- 
citing faces  of  her  husband's  friends.  It  would  be 
delightful  to  have  nothing  to  do,  but  make  yourself 
liked,  to  be  automatically  disentangled  from  all  of 
your  own  complicated,  complicating  relationships 
with  nothing  around  you  but  a  new  world  to  con- 
quer. And  how  thrilled  and  curious  every  one  must 
be  about  her.  What  sort  of  a  woman  had  succeeded 
in  catching  dear  old  Tony !  Tony,  who  was  so  de- 
lightfully, so  essentially,  a  man's  man.  There  had 
been  Vivian,  of  course,  but  no  one  quite  knew  the 
rights  and  the  wrongs  of  that  and  it  was  over  any- 
way. Tony  was  so  deuced  unsusceptible  (Lucy 
prided  herself  on  being  able  to  think  in  English), 
unsophisticated,  too,  about  women,  but  with  a  sense 
of  self-preservation  like  an  animaFs.    And  now  he 


"do  you  remember Y"  31 

had  gone  and  married  an  American  and  a  Bostonian. 
Americans,  one  knew,  were  heiresses  and  Bostonians 
were  blue-stockings.  The  lady,  it  appeared,  was  not 
very  rich,  but  of  course,  Tony  would  never  have 
married  for  money.    It  was  all  very  puzzling. 

And  then,  Lucy  imagined  herself  walking  into  a 
room  full  of  strange,  curious  faces  and  some  one 
murmured,  "That  is  Tony's  wife,"  and  every  one 
looked  up.  She  was  wearing  a  shimmering,  silvery 
blue  dress  and  she  was  looking  her  very,  very  best. 
An  old  lady  told  her  that  she  ought  still  to  be  in 
school  and  a  young  man  told  her  that  she  was  a 
jolly  lucky  woman  and  Tony  a  jolly  lucky  man,  by 
Jove. 

Lucy  was  sure  that  that  was  the  way  Englishmen 
talked. 

And  on  their  way  home,  people  agreed  that  they 
could  understand  any  man's  falling  in  love  with  her. 
Tony  talked  a  lot  about  his  men  friends.  Women 
meant  nothing  to  him.  He  had,  Lucy  knew,  once 
been  engaged  to  a  woman — ^Vivian,  she  had  been 
called — rumour  had  woven  a  pattern  of  legends 
about  it,  but  he  had  never  seemed  anxious  to  discuss 
it.  People  said  he  had  behaved  badly — but  how 
was  one  to  tell'?  Those  things  were  always  so  com- 
plicated. Usually,  every  one  ended  by  behaving 
badly.  At  any  rate,  the  girl  had  made  a  brilliant 
marriage,  which  might  or  might  not  mean  a  broken 


32  BALLOONS 


heart.  It  was,  Lucy  thought  tenderly,  so  character- 
istic of  Tony  to  have  sown  such  legitimate  wild  oats. 
An  engagement  contracted  and  broken  off  in  gusty 
fits  of  honour. 

"You  look  very  lovely,"  he  smiled  at  her. 

She  was  shimmering  in  silvery  blue,  her  eyes  like 
cloudy  star  sapphires,  her  hair  like  primroses  and 
ashes. 

In  the  motor  she  leant  against  him,  a  discreet  gen- 
tle pressure.  She  always  gave  you  a  feeling  of  deli- 
cately intertwined  reticencies  and  avowals,  a  faint 
New  England  flavouring  which  she  had  never  lost. 

"I  do  hope  they'll  like  me,"  she  murmured. 

Diimer  was  a  great  success.  Lucy  loved  her  neigh- 
bours and  her  neighbours  loved  her,  while  secretly 
congratulating  themselves  on  having  always  been 
right  about  Boston  (which  they  had  never  visited 
and  of  which  they  knew  nothing) . 

After  dinner  a  few  guests  trickled  in  for  the  tiny 
dance  that  was  to  follow.  It  was  all  very  much 
as  Lucy  had  imagined  it,  old  ladies  delighted  by  her 
youth,  old  men  delighted  by  her  prettiness.  Every 
one  saying  that  she  was  very  un-American  (by 
which  they  meant  unlike  the  Americans  they  had 
known). 

Then,  suddenly,  a  hushed  silence  grabbed  hold  of 
all  the  various  conversations.  Tony  got  up.  His 
hostess  was  saying,  "I  want  to  present  Mrs.  Everill." 


"do  you  remember T  '  33 

Some  one  in  a  corner  gave  a  little  suppressed  laugh, 
Lucy  looked. 

She  saw  a  thin,  dark  woman  with  charming  ir- 
regular features  and  a  figure  which  looked  as  if  it 
had  been  put  into  her  black  velvet  dress  with  a  shoe- 
horn, and  she  heard  her  say  in  a  low  voice  which 
somehow  seemed  to  creep  inside  shut  parts  of  you, 
"Tony  and  I  are  very  old  friends."  They  were 
coming  straight  to  her  and  then,  next  thing  she  knew 
was  that  voice  again,  saying,  "Mrs.  Everill,  you 
must  forgive  me  if  I  say  that,  for  the  moment,  you 
are  to  me,  just  Tony's  wife.  But,  of  course,  I  know 
that  to  be  that  you  must  be  a  great  many  other  things 
besides." 

Lucy  knew  that  every  one  was  looking  at  them, 
not  at  her,  Lucy,  the  bride  (and  she  had  been  so 
proud  and  happy — childishly  happy — to  be  a  bride), 
not  at  Tony,  not  even  at  Lady  Dynevor,  but  at 
them^  at  the  situation.  It  seemed  to  Lucy  so  inde- 
cent, so  vulgar. 

"You  will  love  Lucy,  Vivian,"  Tony  said  quietly, 
and  Lucy  looked  up  at  the  charming,  gracious  ap- 
parition so  dominant,  with  her  beautifully  friendly 
maimer.  Her  eyes  looked  as  if  she  could  never  find 
the  bottom,  as  if  tears  were  just  going  to  well  up 
and  drown  them. 

"Of  course  I  shall,"  she  said,  and  there  was  a 
little  edge  on  her  voice,  as  if  it  were  going  to  break. 


34  BALLOONS 


That  was  the  feeling  she  gave  you,  Lucy  thought, 
of  being  on  the  brink  of  something,  a  tenseness  like 
the  moment  when  the  conductor's  baton  is  raised  be- 
fore you  have  been  released  by  the  music. 

"How  ill  you  look,"  Tony  was  saying.  Vivian 
laughed, 

"You  always  said  that,  do  you  remember ?" 

Conversation  was  buzzing  again.  Lucy  turned  to 
her  neighbour.  Through  what  he  was  saying,  she 
could  hear  Tony — "your  white  velvet  dress — do  you 
remember  .  .  .?" 

She  got  up  to  dance.  The  room  seemed  to  whirl 
round  her  while  she  stood  quite  still. 

"Of  course,  we  know  all  about  Boston,  Mrs. 
Everill,"  her  partner  was  saying,  "it  produces  beans 
and  Cabots  and  blue-stockings — and  brides,"  he 
added,  smiling. 

Tony  and  Vivian  were  still  sitting  on  their  sofa. 
As  she  passed,  she  heard  Vivian  laugh,  "Do  you  re- 
member?" 

The  evening  seemed  to  Lucy  interminable.  Tony 
was  very  good.  He  did  his  duty  very  nobly,  danc- 
ing with  every  one,  even  his  wife. 

At  half-past  one  they  went  home. 

"How  charming  Lady  Dynevor  is,"  Lucy  mur- 
mured. 

"Charming?"    Tony  looked  puzzled.    "Vivian?" 

It  obviously  seemed  to  him  an  almost  grotesquely 


"do  you  remember *?"  35 

irrelevant,  inadequate  word.  And  then,  feeling  that 
something  was  expected  of  him,  "She  is  a  wonder- 
ful woman,  loyal,  faithful,  a  real  friend." 

"She  is  very  pretty,"  Lucy  said. 

"Pretty,  is  she?  I  hadn't  noticed  it."  Again  he 
seemed  puzzled,  as  if  it  were  really  too  difficult  to 
connect  up  these  absurd  adjectives  with  Vivian. 
Then  an  idea  occurred  to  him. 

"You're  not  jealous^  sweetheart,  are  you?" 

"No,"  she  lied. 

"Vivian  is — well,  Vivian,"  he  explained,  making 
matters  worse.  And  Lucy  knew  that  if  she  had  said 
"beautiful,  fascinating,  majestic,"  if  she  had  used 
all  the  superlatives  in  the  world,  they  would  have 
seemed  to  him  equally  irrelevant  and  inadequate. 
But  Tony  was  very  much  in  love  with  his  wife  and 
she  knew  it  and  soon,  in  his  tender,  whimsical,  lov- 
ing, teasing  way,  he  had  made  her  perfectly  happy 
again. 

She  was  standing  in  front  of  her  dressing-table, 
her  cendre  hair — shadows  shot  with  sunlight — fall- 
ing like  a  waterfall  over  her  shoulders.  With  one 
hand  she  was  combing  it,  with  the  other  she  fingered 
a  bundle  of  snapshots  taken  on  their  honeymoon — 
lovely  snapshots,  full  of  sunshine  and  queer,  char- 
acteristic positions  and  expressions.  They  might, 
she  thought,  have  been  taken  by  a  loving  detective. 


36  BALLOONS 


Tony  came  in. 

"Do  you  remember,"  she  said — and  then,  sud- 
denly, with  a  wave  of  misery,  she  realised  it.  The 
phrase  did  not  belong  to  her. 


THE  MARTYR 
[To  H.  G.  Wells] 

I  MYSELF,  have  always  liked  Delancey  Wobura. 
,  To  begin  with,  there  is  something  so  endearing 
about  the  way  he  displays  his  defects,  never  hiding 
them  or  tidying  them  away  or  covering  them  up. 
There  they  are  for  all  the  world  to  see,  a  reassuring 
shop  window  full  of  frank  shortcomings.  Besides,  I 
never  can  resist  triumphant  vitality.  Delancey  is 
overflowing  with  joie  de  vivre,  with  curiosity,  with 
a  certainty  of  imminent  adventure.  If  you  say  to 
him,  'T  saw  a  policeman,"  his  face  lights  up  and 
so  it  would  if  you  said  *T  saw  a  dog,"  or  a  cat,  or 
a  donkey-cart.  To  him  policemen  and  dogs  and 
cats  and  donkey-carts  are  always  just  about  to  do 
something  dramatic  or  absurd  or  imexpected.  Nor  is 
he  discouraged  by  unfailing  regularity  in  their  be- 
haviour. Faith  is  "the  evidence  of  things  not 
seen." 

And  then,  too,  he  is  so  very  welcoming.  Not,  of 
course,  that  he  makes  you  feel  you  are  the  only  per- 
son in  the  world  because  a  world  with  only  one  other 

37 


38  BALLOONS 


person  in  it  would  be  inconceivably  horrible  to  him, 
but  he  does  make  you  quite  sure  that  he  is  most 
frightfully  glad  to  see  you — all  the  gladder  because 
it  is  such  a  surprise.  Delancey  always  makes  a  point 
of  being  surprised.  Also,  though  he  is  invariably 
in  a  hurry — being  in  a  hurry  is  one  of  the  tributes 
he  pays  to  life — he  as  invariably  turns  round  and 
walks  with  you,  in  your  direction,  to  convince  him- 
self that  having  met  you  in  Jermyn  Street  is  an  al- 
together unexpected  and  delightful  adventure.  And 
he  never  feels,  as  I  always  do,  that  a  five  minutes' 
conversation  is  a  stupid,  embarrassing  thing,  too 
long  for  mere  civility  and  too  short  for  anything  else. 
The  five  minutes  are  filled  to  the  brim  and  off  he 
rushes  again,  leaving  me  just  a  little  more  tired  and 
leisurely  from  the  contact.  Delancey  is  the  life 
and  soul  of  a  party — or  perhaps  I  should  say  the 
life  and  body.  He  likes  eating  and  drinking  and 
talking  to  women  and  talking  to  men  and  smoking 
and  telling  a  story.  And  if  he  does  address  his  neigh- 
bour a  little  as  if  she  were  a  meeting  at  a  bye-elec- 
tion, open  air,  he  at  any  rate  never  addresses  her  as 
if  she  were  a  duty  and  no  one  had  ever  wanted  to 
kiss  her. 

To  Delancey  all  women  have  had  lovers  and  hus- 
bands and  children  and  religious  conversions  and 
railway  accidents.  Old  maids  and  clergymen's  wives 
adore  him. 


THE    MARTYR  39 


I  don't  know  what  it  was  that  made  him  write 
originally.  Perhaps  it  was  his  name — Delancey 
Wobum  sounds  like  the  author — or  the  hero — of  a 
serial.  Or  it  may  have  been  that  his  exuberant 
desire  for  self-expression  had  burst  through  the  four 
walls  of  practical  professions.  He  had,  I  believe, 
considered  the  stage  and  the  church.  Journalism 
would  have  seemed  to  me  the  obvious  outlet  but  he 
preferred  literature.  "Creation  is  such  /z^«,"  he 
would  explain,  beaming.  And,  of  course,  he  was 
tremendously  successful.  Delancey  was  designed  on 
a  pattern  of  success. 

That  was  one  of  the  obvious  defects  I  was  talking 
about.  Delancey  has  missed  his  failures.  He  has 
fought  and  been  defeated  but  he  has  never  longed 
and  been  frustrated.  In  his  case,  romance  is  real- 
ism.   He  has  only  known  happy  endings. 

Naturally  he  is  not  an  interesting  writer.  How 
could  he  be  ?  And,  naturally,  he  is  a  successful  one. 
How  could  he  help  it"?  Delancey  writes  for  maga- 
zines in  England  and  America.  I,  myself,  never 
read  magazines,  but  occasionally  he  sends  me  one 
and  every  twenty  stories  (I  think  it  is  twenty)  be- 
come a  book.  The  English  ones  were  about  scape- 
graces and  irresistible  ne'er-do-wells,  ancestral  homes 
with  frayed  carpets  and  faded  hangings  in  which 
penniless  woman-haters  (the  last  of  a  noble  line) 
sit  and  brood,  living  alone  with  equally  gruff,  worn- 


40  BALLOONS 


an-hating  family  retainers.  Sometimes,  too,  there 
was  an  absent-minded  dreamer,  and  villainous  busi- 
ness men  worked  indefatigably  in  the  interests  of 
their  own  ultimate  frustration. 

But  this,  of  course,  would  never  do  for  America 
where  there  isn't  a  market  for  ne'er-do-wells,  frayed 
carpets  inspire  no  glamour,  and  dreamers  who  be- 
fore the  war  were  despised  as  harmless,  are  now 
damned  as  dangerous.  No,  America  must  have  her 
special  line  and  no  one  better  than  Delancey  knew 
how  to  mix  the  fragrance  of  true  love  with  the  fla- 
vour of  Wall  Street  and  serve  at  the  right  tempera- 
ture. 

He  wasn't  proud  of  his  writing — or,  rather,  he 
wasn't  proud  of  it  with  every  one.  In  his  heart  of 
hearts,  what  he  wanted  was  not  the  applause  of  the 
public,  but  the  faith  of  a  coterie,  to  be  a  martyr,  mis- 
understood by  the  many,  worshipped  by  the  few.  A 
Bloomsbury  hero,  a  Chelsea  King!  "We  confess 
that  as  a  writer  Mr.  Delancey  Wobum  is  altogether 
too  rarefied  for  our  taste.  His  work  is  far  too  im- 
pregnated by  the  stamp  of  a  tiny  clique  of  rather 
self-conscious  superintellectuals.  Reading  his  books, 
we  feel  as  if  we  had  suddenly  entered  a  room  full  of 
people  who  know  one  another  very  well.  In  other 
words,  we  feel  out  of  it." 

What  would  not  Delancey  have  given  for  a  re- 
view that  began  like  that!     Instead  of  which  the 


THE    MARTYR 


41 


best  that  he  could  hope  for  in  "shorter  notices" 
would  be  an  announcement  that  "Mr.  Wobum's 
many  admirers  will  no  doubt  find  his  last  book  emi- 
nently to  their  taste.  He  provides  a  lavish  supply 
of  the  features  they  are  accustomed  to  look  for  in  his 
work." 

Poor  Delancey,  his  stories  did  sell  so  well  I  And 
there  was  his  flat  in  Grafton  Street  with  the  beauti- 
ful new  taffetas  curtains  and  the  cigars  that  had 
just  arrived  from  Havana,  with  his  own  initials  on. 

So  from  week  to  week  he  put  off  becoming  an  ar- 
tist and  one  year  (after  a  four-month  love  affair  and 
two  lacquer  cabinets)  he  made  a  lecture  tour  in 
America. 

"Was  it  a  success*?"  I  asked  wearily  (Delancey's 
success  is  always  such  a  terribly  foregone  conclu- 
sion). 

"Tremendous,"  he  beamed.  "I  was  careful  to  be 
a  little  dull  because  then  they  think  they're  learning 
something."  But  he  was  out  of  love,  the  flat  was 
overcrowded,  money  continued  to  pour  in  and  he 
knew  terribly  well  that  he  was  not  making  a  contri- 
bution to  contemporary  literature. 

He  had  always  assured  me  at  intervals  that  some 
day  he  would  write  his  "real  book"  but  I  think  it 
was  after  his  tour  in  America  that  the  dream  became 
a  project.  He  burst  in  to  tell  me  about  it.  Delancey 
always  begins  things  with  a  sudden  noisy  rush. 


42  BALLOONS 


"Charlotte,"  he  said,  "I  have  made  up  my 
mind." 

"It  sounds  very  momentous,"  I  teased.  He  de- 
cided years  ago  that  I  was  grave,  fastidious,  whimsi- 
cal, aloof  and  (I  suspect)  a  little  faded.  I  have 
long  given  up  fighting  my  own  battle  (to  be  known) 
because  I  realise  that  Delancey  never  revises  the 
passports  given  to  old  ideas.  There  is  always,  to 
him,  something  a  little  bit  sacred  about  the  accepted. 
"I  can't  go  on  with  it  any  longer,"  he  explained. 

"Go  on  with  what?" 

"My  damned  stories." 

"How  ungrateful  you  are,"  I  murmured,  thinking 
of  the  lacquer  cabinets,  "you  have  a  market,  you 
can  command  a  price.  Each  of  your  love  affairs  is 
more  magnificently  studded  with  flowers  than  the 
last " 

"Be  quiet,"  he  said.  "I  came  to  you  because  I 
knew  that  you  would  imderstand." 

"You  are  trying  to  blackmail  me." 

"Do  be  serious,"  he  pleaded.  "I  am  going  to  give 
all  that  up.  I  have  determined  to  settle  down  and 
dedicate  myself  entirely  to  my  book." 

"But,"  I  expostulated,  "have  you  thought  of  the 
yearning  Saturday  'Evening  Post,  of  the  deserted 
Strand^ 

"I  have  thought  of  everything,"  he  said,  "I  shall 


THE    MARTYR  43 


be  sacrificing  5,000  pounds  a  year,  but  what  is  5,000 
pounds  a  year  *?" 

I  thought  of  the  taffetas  curtains  and  the  cigars, 
but  I  answered  quite  truthfully. 

"I  don't  know." 

"You  see,  Charlotte,"  he  dropped  the  noble  for 
the  confidential,  "I  have  got  things  to  say,  things 
that  are  vital  to  me.  I  couldn't  put  them  in  my 
other  work.  How  could  I*?  It  would  have  seemed 
— ^you  will  think  me  ridiculous — a  kind  of  prostitu- 
tion." 

"Yes,"  I  said. 

"But  they  were  clamouring  for  expression  all  the 
time.  And  I  have  kept  them  down  till  I  couldn't 
keep  them  down  any  longer.  Of  course,  I  know  my 
book  won't  be  a  success — a  popular  success,  I  mean 
— but  it  won't  have  been  written  for  the  multitude 
but  for  the  few — the  people  who  really  care,  who 
really  understand.  It  may  be  even  thought,"  there 
was  exultation  in  his  voice,  "dull." 

"Well,"  I  said,  "I  think  it  is  very  brave  of  you 
— and  quite  right.    Truly  I  do." 

"I  think  I  shall  take  a  tiny  cottage  in  a  fishing 
village  in  Devonshire,"  Delancey  was  as  usual  seeing 
things  pictorially — bare  white-washed  walls,  blue 
and  white  linen  curtains  and  a  pot  of  wall  flowers. 

A  week  later  he  came  to  see  me  again. 

"When  are  you  off  to  Devonshire?"  I  asked. 


44  BALLOONS 


"I  have  decided  to  stay  here,"  he  answered,  "there 
is  a  roar  of  life  in  London,  a  vibrating  pulse,  a  muf- 
fled thunder."  I  began  to  be  afraid  that  Delancey's 
book  would  be  very  bad  indeed.  It  was,  it  appeared, 
to  be  a  novel.  "Not  exactly  a  novel,"  he  explained, 
"a  large  canvas  with  figures  moving  on  a  back- 
ground of  world  conditions."  I  thought  of  "War 
and  Peace"  and  was  silent.  It  doesn't  matter  being 
silent  with  Delancey  because  he  doesn't  notice  it. 

"I  want,"  he  said,  "to  picture  the  very  earth  in 
the  agonies  of  labour  giving  birth  to  a  new  world." 
Later,  the  theme  was  (to  my  secret  relief)  narrowed 
down  to  England. 

"I  have  changed  my  motif  a  little,"  he  said.  "I 
simply  want  to  portray  the  quicksilver  of  after- 
war  conditions — England  in  transition."  At  this 
time  Delancey  seemed  to  me  the  least  little  tiny  bit 
depressed.  The  income  he  was  sacrificing  rose  (in 
his  conversation)  from  5,000  to  7,000  pounds.  He 
dined  out  less,  avoided  his  club  and  Christie's.  Also, 
he  kept  out  of  love.  For  ten  years,  Delancey  had 
always  been  in  love.  Managed  by  him,  it  was  a  de- 
lightful state,  ably  presided  over  by  head  waiters 
and  florists.  It  made,  he  once  explained  to  me,  all 
the  difference  to  walking  into  a  room. 

But  everything  was  changed  now.  The  master- 
piece was  a  jealous  god.  Jealous  and,  I  sometimes 
thought,  apt  to  be  a  little  tiresome.     It  had  to  be 


THE    MARTYR  45 


referred  to  so  very  deferentially,  with  such  carefully 
serious  respect.  Also,  it  cast  a  shadow  of  gravity 
over  Delancey — Delancey  who  was  never  meant  to 
be  a  high  priest,  but  rather  a  young  man  in  white 
flarmels,  with  a  cigarette  in  his  mouth,  punting  a 
young  girl  with  a  red  sunshade — like  an  illustration 
to  one  of  his  own  stories. 

Friendship  is  a  difficult,  dangerous  job.  It  is  also 
(though  we  rarely  admit  it)  extremely  exhausting. 
But  never  have  my  patience  and  endurance  been 
more  severely  tested  than  during  the  year  of  De- 
lancey's  masterpiece.  He  finally  decided  that  in 
the  foreground,  there  was  to  be  the  clash  of  two 
human  souls  and  in  the  background,  the  collision  of 
two  worlds — the  old  (pre- War)  and  the  new.  In 
fact,  a  partie  carree  of  conflicts. 

"You  with  your  love  of  form,"  he  explained  to 
me,  "will  appreciate  the  care  I  have  given  to  the 
structure.  It  is,"  he  added,  "difficult  to  mould 
vast  masses  of  material." 

As  the  months  went  by  I  began  to  be  horribly 
afraid  that  Delancey's  novel  would  be  very,  very 
long  indeed.  And  even  if  nobody  read  it  through, 
not  even  a  reviewer,  I  should  have  to  without  skip- 
ping a  word  or  a  comma. 

"The  sentences,"  Delancey  told  me,  "are  rather 
long.  I  find  the  semicolon  very  useful  for  cumula- 
tive effects."    A  vast  array  of  words  policed  by  semi- 


46  BALLOONS 


colons.  I  felt  a  little  dizzy.  Would  they  be  able  to 
keep  order"? 

"Of  course,"  he  continued,  "the  interest  is  very 
largely  psychological,  but  I  regard  the  book  mainly 
as  a  document — a  social  document.  The  fiction  of 
to-day  is  the  history  of  to-morrow." 

This  seemed  conclusive.  The  book  could  not  have 
less  than  700  pages.  A  social  document  with  psy- 
chological interest  and  a  double  conflict.  Why,  it 
would  be  short  at  that.  And  then,  one  day,  when 
Delancey's  book  had  become  to  me  a  form  of  eter- 
nity, he  arrived,  breathless  with  excitement. 

"To  all  intents  and  purposes,  it's  finished,"  he 
gasped. 

"Thank  God,"  I  murmured  faintly. 

"It  will  be  an  awful  loss  to  me,"  he  stated  mourn- 
fully. 

"It  isn't  dead  yet,"  I  said  with  feeble  jocularity. 

"It  is  sad  to  see  your  children  leave  you.  To 
watch  them  step  out  into  a  cold,  inhospitable 
world,"  he  went  on. 

"A  warm,  welcoming  world,"  I  amended  dishon- 
estly.   "You  haven't  told  me  what  it  is  called  yet." 

"It  isn't  called  anything.  I  want  you  to  be  its 
god-mother,  Charlotte.    What  about  'Whither'  *?" 

"Too  like  a  pamphlet,"  I  was  glad  to  be  on  firm 
ground  again. 


THE    MARTYR  47 


"I  thought  about  'Fate's  Laboratory/  but  it  isn't 
very  rhythmical,  is  it*?" 

"Not  very,"  I  agreed. 

"The  question  mark  after  the  'Whither'  would 
look  nice  on  the  cover,"  he  reflected  regretfully, 

I  brightened.  This  was  the  old  Delancey.  The 
Delancey  of  the  Saturday  Evening  Post  and  the 
Strand,  of  the  taffetas  curtains  and  the  cottage  in 
Devonshire.  By  my  sudden  glow  of  gladness  I  real- 
ised how  much  I  had  missed  him.  But  I  couldn't 
say,  "Dear,  dear  Delancey,  please  be  your  old  self 
and  never,  never,  whatever  you  do,  write  another 
'good'  book,"  so  I  confessed  that  a  question  mark 
would  look  very  nice,  but  that  I  still  thought  that 
"Whither"  sounded  rather  like  a  religious  tract. 

"Well,  we  must  think  it  over,"  he  said. 

A  week  later,  he  announced  to  me  in  a  tone  which 
indicated  clearly  that  my  opinion  was  only  wanted 
if  it  was  approval,  "I  have  decided  to  call  my 
book  'Transition.'  " 

"I  always  like  single  word  titles,"  I  said. 

"No  one  will  read  it,"  he  said.  "One  bares  one's 
soul  to  the  public  and  they  throw  stones  at  it.  But 
at  any  rate,  now  I  can  hold  my  head  high." 

I  didn't  laugh,  but  it  was  the  effort  of  a  lifetime. 
Dear  Delancey  was  so  very  absurd  as  a  self-made 
martyr.  It  was  somehow  impossible  for  him  to  give 
an  impression  of  having  been  persecuted  for  right- 


48  BALLOONS 


eousness'  sake.  His  shiny,  rosy  face  had  never 
looked  rounder,  his  trousers  had  never  been  more 
perfect  or  his  shoes  more  polished.  And  there  were 
still  the  same  little  outbursts  of  childish  prosperity, 
his  watch,  his  tie-pin,  his  links  were  all  redolent  of 
a  vitality  that  had  ever  been  just  the  least  little  bit 
blatant. 

"Delancey,"  I  said,  "I  want  you  to  have  just  the 
sort  of  success  you  want  for  yourself." 

"Thank  you,"  he  said,  wondering  if  I  knew  what 
I  was  talking  about. 

And  then,  one  day,  a  proof  copy  of  Delancey's 
book  arrived.  I  looked  at  the  paper  cover.  It  was 
bright  orange  with  "Transition"  slanting  upwards 
in  immense  black  letters.  "Very  arresting,"  I  could 
hear  the  publisher  saying.  Gingerly  I  unwrapped  it. 
Underneath,  it  was  sober  black  linen,  with  bright 
blue  lettering  still  on  the  cross.  I  sat  with  it  in  my 
hands,  feeling  limp  and  will-less.  But,  at  last,  I 
pulled  myself  together.  I  read  the  dedication,  "To 
those  who  died."  I  saw  that  there  were  600  pages, 
big  pages  crowded  with  words.  And  then,  saying  to 
myself,  "It  is  no  good  putting  it  off,"  I  began  to 
read.  Delancey's  book  was  certainly  not  at  all  like 
his  stories.  It  was  very  nearly  rather  a  good  book 
and  it  was  quite  extraordinarily  dull.  The  social 
structure  played  a  role  of  deadly  relentless  magni- 
tude.    It  began  (before  the  War)  as  an  immense 


THE    MARTYR  49 


iron  scaffolding  and  ended  sprawling  in  the  fore- 
ground, torn  up  by  the  roots.  In  the  clutches  of  this 
gigantic  monster,  the  two  chief  characters  not  un- 
naturally reduced  by  comparison  with  their  sur- 
roundings to  the  proportion  of  pygmies  in  their  turn, 
worked  from  happiness  to  the  self-conscious  misery 
which  is  the  only  true  state  of  grace. 

"I  have  chosen  a  man  and  a  woman,  neither  of 
them  in  any  way  exceptional,"  wrote  Delancey  in  the 
preface  and  though  this  was  undoubtedly  so,  they 
seemed  to  me  truer  to  fiction  than  to  life.  No,  the 
merits  of  the  book  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  char- 
acters, they  lay  in  the  descriptions  of  the  English 
■countryside,  of  village  life,  of  London  traffic,  of 
the  Armistice,  of  an  Albert  Hall  meeting.  There 
was  a  close  observation  of  detail  and  that  pictorial 
sense  which  is  Delancey's  one  gift  and  which  he  re- 
lentlessly suppressed  whenever  he  could,  neverthe- 
less forced  its  way  out  here  and  there.  The  canvas 
seemed  to  me  immense.  Politicians  and  preachers, 
workers  and  capitalists,  artists  and  philistines, 
"good"  women  and  prostitutes,  soldiers  and  consci- 
entious objectors  jostled  one  another  in  the  melee. 
Bloomsbury,  Westminster,  Chelsea  and  Mayfair 
each  had  its  appointed  place,  while  race-courses 
and  night-clubs  alternated  with  mining  villages  and 
methodist  chapels.  But,  unlike  Delancey's  other 
stories,  the  soldiers  had  no  V.  C.'s  and  the  workers 


5©  BALLOONS 


didn't  touch  their  caps.  My  eyes  ached  and  my 
brain  tired  as  I  read  on,  but  I  forced  myself  forward 
with  the  thought  that  no  one  else  in  the  world  would 
reach  the  end. 

Then  the  reviews  began.  I  felt  a  little  nervous 
but  one  seemed  more  glowing  than  the  last.  Finally, 
a  notice  appeared  two  columns  long  entitled  "A  So- 
cial Document"  which  ended  with  the  words,  "We 
venture  to  predict  that  this  book  will  be  read  loo 
years  hence  as  a  truer  picture  of  the  England  of 
to-day  than  most  of  the  histories  that  are  being 
written."  Delancey  was  frightfully  pleased,  nat- 
urally. With  child-like  joy  he  showed  me  cuttings 
from  intellectual  literary  papers.  His  book  was 
even  mentioned  in  a  leading  article  and  formed  the 
topic  of  a  sermon. 

"Think  of  reaching  a  pulpit,"  he  exclaimed  exul- 
tantly. "Of  course,  I  know  I've  lost  my  old  public 
but  I've  found  my  soul." 

"People  talk  to  me  of  their  work  now,"  he  told 
me  another  time;  "in  old  days,  they  never  thought 
me  one  of  themselves.  I  was  a  story  teller,  not  an 
artist." 

And  then  it  was  that  an  extraordinary  thing  hap- 
pened— "Transition"  began  to  sell.  It  was  quoted 
and  talked  about  until  the  snowball  of  fame,  steadily 
gathering  momentum,  started  rolling  down-hill  to 
the  general  public.    The  sales  went  up  and  up  and 


THE    MARTYR  ^1 


up.  The  circulation  reached  100,000  and  soon  after, 
150,000.  Why  people  bought  it  and  whether  they 
read  it,  I  don't  know,  but  Sydney  (the  heroine)  and 
Mark  Allison  (the  hero)  became  household  words 
and  soon  they  were  used  as  generic  terms — a  Sydney, 
or  an  Allison,  without  so  much  as  an  inverted 
comma ! 

Delancey  hardly  ever  came  to  see  me.  I  imagine 
he  was  in  a  very  divided  state  of  mind  I  He  had  so 
dreadfully  wanted  to  be  an  intellectual,  to  be  able  to 
rail  at  the  base  imbecile  public  in  exquisitely  select 
Bloomsbury  coteries,  he  had  so  resolutely  determined 
to  be  a  martyr,  to  sacrifice  himself  on  the  altar  of 
pure  art,  and  somehow  Mr.  T.  S.  Eliot  and  martyr- 
dom were  as  far  off  as  ever.  After  all,  he  had 
given  up  5,000  pounds  a  year  and  V.  C.'s  and  happy 
endings.  Was  it  his  fault  if  he  was  making  more 
money  than  ever  and  the  inner  circles  of  the  unread 
elect  seemed  more  firmly  closed  than  ever? 

At  this  time,  Delancey  avoided  me,  but  I  heard 
that  "Transition"  was  to  be  dramatised  and  that  the 
film  rights  had  been  bought.  How  the  endless  cha- 
otic mass,  loosely  held  together  by  semi-colons,  was 
to  be  moulded  into  a  drama  or  a  movie  was  quite 
beyond  my  imagination,  but  evidently  some  enter- 
prising people  had  decided  to  call  their  play  "Tran- 
sition." "Delancey  must,"  I  reflected,  "be  getting 
very  rich  indeed."    But  still  he  didn't  come  near  mt. 


52  BALLOONS 


until  one  day  I  sent  for  him.  He  looked,  I  thought, 
just  a  tiny  bit  care-worn.  The  all  conquering  light 
had  gone  out  of  his  eye.  His  boots  were  a  little 
dusty  and  he  wore  no  tie-pin.  He  had,  I  suppose, 
become  rich  beyond  the  symptoms  of  prosperity. 

"Well,"  I  smiled  at  him  to  reassure  him. 

"It  has  all  been  very  surprising,  hasn't  it?"  he 
said  with  an  embarrassed  expression. 

I  didn't  know  whether  to  say  "yes"  or  "no,"  that 
I  was  glad  or  that  I  was  sorry. 

"But  it  doesn't  alter  the  quality  of  your  book," 
I  consoled  him. 

He  brightened,  "No,"  he  said,  "it  doesn't;  I  am 
glad  you  said  that." 

We  talked  about  other  things,  music  and  old  fur- 
niture and  people.  He  had,  he  said,  thought  of  buy- 
ing a  house  in  Chelsea.  It  was,  I  realised,  not  ex- 
actly the  entry  he  had  planned  but  I  encouraged  the 
idea.  There  was,  I  explained,  nothing  like  the 
Thames. 

And  so  we  rambled  on  till  he  took  his  leave.  But 
five  minutes  after  his  departure  I  heard  the  bell  ring. 
Delancey  burst  back  into  the  room, 

"I  forgot  to  tell  you,"  he  said,  "that  185,000 
copies  of  Transition'  have  sold." 


VI 
A  MOTOR 

ITo  Alice  Longworth] 

THERE  is  a  special  quality  about  a  December 
sunset.  The  ruffles  of  red  gold  gradually  iin- 
tightening,  the  congested  mauve  islands  on  a  trans- 
parent sea  of  green,  the  ultimate  luminous  primrose 
dissolving  into  violet  powder  and  then  the  cold  bit- 
ing night  lit  up  by  strange  patches  of  colour  that 
have  somehow  been  forgotten  in  the  sky. 

Eve  was  walking  home,  her  quick,  defiant  move- 
ments challenging  the  evening,  her  head  bent  slight- 
ly forward,  her  chin  almost  touching  her  muff,  while 
her  eyes  shone  and  her  cheeks  glowed  and  her  lithe 
figure  seemed  almost  to  be  cutting  through  the  icy 
air. 

"This  is  happiness,"  she  thought  exultantly,  "this 
bitter  winter  stimulus — I  feel  so  light — as  if  my 
heart  and  mind  were  empty — only  my  body  is  quiv- 
ering with  life — the  pure  life  of  physical  fitness. 
Why  think,  or  feel,  or  look  forward^"  She  doubled 
her  pace  until  her  feet  seemed  to  be  skimming  the 
road.     "I  feel  like  a  duck  and  drake,"  she  laughed 

53 


54  BALLOONS 


to  herself.  "Nothing  matters,  nothing,  while  there 
is  still  frost  in  the  world." 

And  then  she  saw  a  little  motor  waiting  on  the 
other  side  of  the  road.  She  stopped  dead  and  her 
heart  stopped  with  her. 

"There  is  no  reason  why  it  should  be  his.  Hun- 
dreds of  people  have  motors  like  that." 

Resolutely  she  took  a  step  forward.  "I  can't  see 
from  here,  and  I  won't  go  and  look,"  she  added  as 
she  crossed  over. 

And  then,  shutting  her  eyes : 

"Jerry,'*  she  said  to  herself,  trying  to  kill  his 
ghost  with  his  name. 

The  evening  air  had  become  damp  and  penetrat- 
ing. It  made  her  throat  feel  sore  and  she  choked 
a  little  as  she  breathed  it. 

Gingerly  she  approached  the  motor  to  make  sure. 
What  an  absurd  phrase  I  Why,  a  leap  of  her  heart 
would  have  announced  its  presence,  even  had  her 
eyes  been  shut. 

She  knew  its  every  detail,  the  sound  the  gears 
made  changing,  the  feel  of  the  seat,  the  way  the  hood 
went  up.  And,  above  all,  the  little  clock,  ticking 
its  warning  by  day,  regular  and  relentless,  while  at 
night  its  bright  prying  eyes  reminded  her  of  all  the 
things  she  wanted  to  forget.  "It  is  my  conscience," 
she  would  say,  "and  fate  and  mortality.    It  symbol- 


A    MOTOR  ^^ 

ises  all  the  limitations  of  life.  It  is  the  frontier  to 
happiness,  the  defeat  of  peace." 

"Go  on,"  he  had  said,  "and  you  will  end  by  for- 
getting it." 

It  was  what  he  had  called  her  habit  of  talking 
things  "away." 

How  often  she  had  slipped  into  his  motor  after 
him,  sliding  along  the  shiny  leather,  nestling  hap- 
pily against  him,  explaining  that  there  was  no 
draught,  that  the  rain  was  not  coming  in,  that  her 
feet  were  as  warm  as  toast.  How  often  he  had 
steered  slowly  with  one  hand,  while  her  fingers  crept 
into  the  palm  of  the  other.  And  then  he  had  turned 
off  the  engine  and  they  had  sat  there  together  silent 
and  alone,  cut  off  from  the  world.  How  she  had 
loved  his  motor  I  Surreptitiously  she  would  caress 
it  with  her  hand,  stroking  the  cool  shiny  leather,  and 
seeing  him  looking  at  her,  she  would  say,  "I  think  my 
purse  must  have  fallen  behind  the  seat."  It  had 
become  to  her  a  child  and  a  mother,  a  refuge  and  an 
adventure,  an  island  cut  off  from  all  the  wretched 
necessities  of  existence,  associated  only  with  her  and 
with  him.  It  was  a  much  better  kingdom  than  a 
room;  for  a  room  is  full  of  pacaphernalia  and  im- 
pedimenta, with  books  and  photographs,  and  the 
envelopes  of  letters  to  remind  you  of  people  and 
things  that  you  want  to  forget.  After  all  she  could 
not  sweep  her  house  clear  of  her  life,  empty  it  of  the 


56  BALLOONS 


necessary  and  the  superfluous  of  her  ties  and  her 
duties  and  her  responsibilities. 

But  his  motor — his  little  gasping  uncomfortable 
motor — that  was  really  and  truly  hers,  because  it 
was  his.    Here  was  her  throne  and  his  altar. 

No  wonder  she  sometimes  stroked  it  a  little,  when 
it  was  too  dark  for  him  to  ask  her  what  she  was 
doing. 

And  now,  now  some  one  else  crept  in  after  him, 
slid  towards  him  on  the  shiny  leather,  murmured 
that  her  feet  were  as  warm  as  toast,  that  there  was 
no  draught,  and  of  course  the  rain  didn't  come 
in  .  .  . 

Or  did  she  say,  "Do  you  think  there  is  some- 
thing the  matter  with  your  motor  to-day?  It  seems 
a  little  asthmatic?' 

Eve  looked  at  the  house.  She  could  see  bright- 
ness shining  behind  the  curtains.  She  could  imagine 
a  glowing  fire  and  a  faint  smell  of  warm  roses. 
Who  was  the  woman?  What  were  they  doing? 
Sitting  on  either  side  of  the  fireplace  drowsily  inti- 
mate, smiling  a  little  perhaps  and  hardly  talking, 
conscious  only  of  the  cold  outside  and  the  warm 
room  and  one  another  .  .  . 

Eve  shivered.  Almost  unconsciously  she  fingered 
the  mud  guard.  "A  room  is  a  horrible  unprivate 
thing,"  she  said.  "People  walk  in  and  out  of  it, 
any  one,  and  there  are  books  and  photographs  and 


A    MOTOR  57 

letters.  It  is  a  market  place,  not  a  sanctuary, — 
whereas  you  .  .  ."  She  looked  at  the  little  motor. 
It  was  too  dark  to  see  anything,  but  every  line  of  it 
was  branded  on  her  heart. 

"No  one  will  ever  love  you  as  I  did,"  she  said  to 
it  and  slowly,  wearily,  dragging  one  foot  after  an- 
other, she  walked  away  into  the  cold  raw  night. 

"Nothing  in  the  world  like  winter  air  to  make  you 
feel  fit,"  Bob  said  to  himself  as  he  swung  himself 
along  the  road  at  a  tremendous  pace. 

"Jove,  what  a  sunset!"  he  added,  looking  up  at 
the  red  gold  ruffles  slowly  untightening.  He  re- 
flected that  there  is  nothing  in  the  world  like  health. 
Live  cleanly  and  the  high  thinking  will  look  after 
itself — or  at  least  won't  matter.  Physical  condition, 
there's  nothing  like  it.  Love  and  that  sort  of  thing 
all  very  well  in  its  way,  but  a  cold  bath  in  the  morn- 
ing and  plenty  of  exercise  .  .  .  He  began  to  whis- 
tle, and  then — because  he  did  feel  most  frightfully 
well — to  run. 

"Run  a  mile  without  being  out  of  breath,"  he 
thought  complacently,  and  then — because  he  hadn't 
meant  to — ("wasn't  even  thinking  of  her,"  he  grum- 
bled to  Providence) — he  found  himself  outside  her 
door.  And  in  the  road  there  was  a  motor,  a  little 
coral  coloured  motor.     He  looked  at  it  in  dismay 


58  BALLOONS 


and  then  he  looked  at  the  house.  He  saw  it  was  lit 
up  and  he  imagined  the  room  he  knew  so  well.  The 
crimson  damask  curtains  and  the  creamy  walls,  the 
glowing  fire  and  the  red  roses,  the  roses  he  had  sent 
for  her.  Probably  she  would  be  sitting  on  that 
white  fur  rug  on  the  floor,  her  arms  clasped  round 
her  knees,  her  red  hair  as  bright  as  the  red  hot  coals, 
her  dark  eyes  dreamy  and  half  closed. 

"Damn  him,  I  wonder  who  he  is,"  and  he  started 
examining  the  motor. 

"It's  not  very  new,"  he  thought,  "the  varnish  is 
all  off  and  those  shiny  leather  seats  are  damned  cold 
and  slippery,  draughty  too,  I  should  say;  hood 
doesn't  close  properly.  Must  let  in  the  rain  like  a 
leaking  boat." 

He  put  his  hand  on  the  mud  guard.  "Bent,"  he 
said.  He  felt  a  little  cheered.  But  then,  looking  at 
the  glowing  house,  he  grew  disconsolate  again. 

"Wonder  what  they're  doing,"  he  grumbled  to 
himself.  "Jabbering  away,  I'll  be  bound.  Never 
was  much  of  a  hand  at  talking  myself.  Wonder  who 
the  deuce  he  is." 

And  then  he  looked  contemptuously  at  the  little 
motor. 

"Damned  if  I  couldn't  do  her  better  than  that," 
he  said.    "God,  how  cold  it  is." 

Irresolutely  he  moved  away.    Then  he  began  to 


A    MOTOR  59 

run,  but  the  raw  air  caught  his  throat  and  he  felt 
out  of  breath. 

"Not  as  young  as  I  was,"  he  thought  as  he 
walked  away  into  the  damp  night. 


VII 

THE  MASTERPIECE 

[To  Harold  Child] 

HE  sat  in  front  of  his  writing-table  with  a  blank 
sheet  of  paper  in  front  of  him — a  creamy, 
virginal  sheet,  inviting  and  elusive.  "A  few  black 
smudges  and  the  whole  of  life  might  be  there," 
he  thought,  "concentrated  but  limited  with  four 
corners  and  no  boundaries."  He  thought  of  the 
untouched  whiteness  of  the  paper  violated  by  a 
masterpiece — or  a  love  letter.  He  didn't  want  to 
think  of  love  letters.  He  had  written  such  hundreds, 
and  for  four  years  now  they  had  all  been  to  the 
same  person.  His  fidelity  had  been  due,  he  sup- 
posed, to  the  fact  that  to  him  she  was  almost  more 
an  idea  than  an  individual,  a  legend  that  he  had 
created.  She  was  his  faith,  his  religion,  his  shrine. 
She  was  on  a  pedestal  from  which  she  shed  a  pale 
gold  light — silvery  gold — of  serenity  won  through 
suffering.  He  saw  her  very  seldom,  but  when  he 
was  with  her  she  reminded  him  of  a  catch  in  the 
voice.     It  was  as  if  her  life  had  reached  breaking 

point  and  for  one  moment  she  would  give  him  as 

60 


THE    MASTERPIECE 


61 


a  divine  gift  a  little  poignant  stumble  before  she 
regained  the  sure  foothold  of  her  calm  courage. 
It  was  these  precious  moments  that  gave  a  burning 
spirit  to  his  image  of  her.  The  legend  had  a  soul. 
But  to-day  he  didn't  want  to  think  of  her.  He 
wanted  to  work.  The  word  made  him  smile  a  little. 
There  had  been  a  time  when  ideas  had  seized  hold 
of  him  and  driven  him  recklessly  wherever  they 
wanted  him  to  go.  Then  he  had  made  form  his 
fetish  and  it  had  become  his  prison.  Now  he  had 
lost  both  his  abandon  and  his  rigidity  and  with 
each,  a  certain  driving  force  had  been  taken  away 
from  him.  He  would  sit  in  front  of  his  table  and 
remember  that  all  the  masterpieces  of  the  world 
are  contained  in  the  alphabet  and  it  would  prevent 
him  from  writing.  And  then  he  would  think  of  her 
and  that  would  mean  writing  to  her  or  writing  for 
her.  In  a  sense,  everything  he  wrote  was  "To  her." 
He  remembered  the  first  time  that  he  had  dared  to 
write  her  a  letter  without  a  beginning.  His  pen 
had  trembled  in  his  hand.  And  yet  it  is  the  way 
all  borderland  letters  begin,  whether  the  frontier 
is  between  acquaintanceship  and  friendship,  or  be- 
tween friendship  and  love.  For  there  are  moments 
in  life  when  if  you  can't  say  "My  own  Blessed," 
you  can  say  nothing — omission  is  the  substitute  for 
the  absolute.  Only  with  her,  formality  was  a 
flavouring  of  intimacy,  a  curious  fragrance  like  a 


62  BALLOONS 


faint  clinging  of  unseen  pot-pourri.  And  so,  for 
a  long  time  after  he  had  sent  her  his  first  endless, 
beginningless  out-pouring,  her  letters  had  begun, 

"Dear  Mr. "  and  had  ended  very  tidily,  with  a 

signature  at  the  bottom  of  a  page. 

He  had  dedicated  his  first  novel  to  her, — "To 

Mrs. "     The  dedication  had  pleased  him.     It 

was  so  immensely  full  of  reserve  and  respect  and 
the  possibility  of  other  things.  A  little,  locked  box 
of  a  dedication.  It  had  pleased  her,  too.  "It  is  a 
lovely  dedication,"  she  had  said  with  that  smile 
she  had,  which  was  like  a  peeping  glimmer  of  sun- 
shine on  a  grey  day. 

He  had  always  gone  on  dedicating  his  books  to 
her.  His  collection  of  poems  had  been  called  "To 
Jane" — which  was  not  her  name,  but  his  name  for 
her — a  deep,  clear  name,  resolute  and  courageous, 
calm  and  direct  and  sure.  A  still  name.  He  won- 
dered if  any  one  had  ever  given  to  another  human 
being  as  much  as  he  had  given  her.  Or  perhaps 
it  was  no  longer  a  question  of  giving.  Everything 
came  from  her  and  belonged  to  her.  She  was  the 
womb  of  his  thoughts  and  feelings.  She  was  his 
roots  in  life  and  his  blossoming.  She  was  the  only 
fixed  point  in  the  chaotic  muddle  of  things,  giving 
a  certain  reality  to  the  world  simply  by  being  in 
it. 

He  hardly  ever  saw  her.    He  couldn't  bring  him- 


THE    MASTERPIECE  63 

self  to  force  his  way  through  the  labyrinthine  tangle 
of  circumstances  that  siirrounded  her.  It  was  as  if 
by  doing  so,  he  could  only  reach  her  mud-spattered 
and  chipped  and  bedraggled,  an  unworthy,  bat- 
tered object.  And  so  he  preferred  her  to  live  in  his 
heart,  warming  and  watering  his  imagination,  glow- 
ing in  cold,  dark  places,  gilding  the  tips  of  his 
fancies,  fertilising  his  soul.  He  hardly  wanted  her 
outside  in  the  physical  world.  But  when  she  was 
with  him,  he  felt  a  deep  serenity,  an  absolute  har- 
mony of  life.  Questions  and  questionings  seemed 
remote  and  frivolous,  the  useless  paraphernalia  of 
empty  lives.  There  came,  with  her,  a  fullness,  a 
sense  of  completion. 

He  sat  and  thought  of  her  and  gradually  he 
shut  his  eyes  and  imagined  her  coming  into  the 
room.  Her  movements  would  be  very  slow  and 
deliberate  and  a  little  tired,  as  if  gently,  almost  im- 
perceptibly, she  were  laying  down  the  burden  of 
her  life  and  allowing  herself,  just  for  a  few  moments, 
the  luxurious  restfulness  of  fatigue.  Slowly  she 
would  pull  off  her  long,  clinging  gloves  and  he  would 
hold  his  breath  with  joy  as  she  unsheathed  her  mar- 
velous arms  and  hands.  And  then  very  tenderly, 
he  would  lift  them  to  his  lips,  one  by  one,  laying 
them  down  on  her  lap  again  where  he  could  see  them. 
And  they  would  smile  at  one  another — a  faint  smile 
hers  would  be,  seen  as  it  were,  through  the  veils  of 


64  BALLOONS 


her  exquisite  reticencies.  And  then  because  she 
knew  it  made  him  happy,  she  would  take  off  her  hat 
and  release  the  shimmer  of  her  silvery  gold  hair,  a 
halo  made  of  sunshine  and  moonlight,  inextricably 
interwoven.  She  always  gave  him  a  feeling  of  gold 
and  silver  and  luminous  whiteness,  a  steady  radiance 
that  illuminated  without  blinding.  And  perhaps 
she  would  sink  her  head  back  into  a  cushion  and 
shut  her  eyes  with  a  little  grateful  sigh  to  these 
moments  of  respite,  and  he  would  watch  her,  proud 
beyond  measure  to  be  able  to  give  her  these  little 
patches  of  peace.  And  between  them  there  would  be 
a  fullness  of  silence.  Sometimes  she  would  talk  a 
little  with  a  low,  clear,  echoless  voice  like  a  note 
without  a  pedal.  A  still  voice — monotonous,  people 
called  it — with  almost  imperceptible  modulations 
which  seemed  gradually  deeply  significant  as  your 
ear  became  attuned  to  them,  like  a  dim  room  in 
which  you  are  able  to  see  everything  when  your  eye 
is  accustomed  to  the  light. 

It  was  one  of  the  altogether  satisfying  things 
about  her,  this  abundant  treasure  of  intimacy  which 
could  not  be  guessed  at  or  even  suspected  by  the 
ordinary  passer-by.  "That  is  the  woman  with  the 
lovely  hair?  I  never  know  what  to  talk  to  her 
about,"  he  had  heard  people  say,  and  exultantly, 
reverently,  he  had  pressed  her  image  to  his  heart. 
She  never  talked  much.    Seeing  her  in  imagination 


THE    MASTERPIECE  65 

to-day,  he  saw  her  leaning  back,  everything  about 
her  drooping  and  relaxed,  her  arms,  her  hands,  her 
feet — they  had  all  abdicated — only  from  the  depths 
of  her  infinite  tiredness  she  was  smiling  faintly  and 
her  smile  was  the  dedication  of  this  moment  to  him. 
Every  now  and  then  she  would  ask  him  a  question 
and  he  would  answer — rather  shortly — or  she  would 
make  a  statement  which  he  would  seal  with  a  mono- 
syllable. There  were  never  any  comments  between 
them.  In  the  absoluteness  of  their  understanding, 
explanations  and  amplifications  had  become  impos- 
sible. 

And  she  would  get  up  slowly,  giving  herself  a 
little  shake  to  wake  herself  up  into  reality  while  he 
gave  her  her  hat,  her  hat-pins,  her  veil,  her  gloves, 
her  bag,  one  by  one,  and  taking  her  hands,  he  would 
kiss  them  first  on  the  backs  and  then  on  the  palms 
and  then  give  them  too  back  to  her. 

And  she  would  say,  "Thank  you,"  and  look  slowly 
all  round  the  room,  as  she  always  did,  wanting  to 
take  it  away  with  her  without  one  detail  missing, 
for  it  was  to  this  room  that  her  soul  retreated  in 
its  moments  of  unbearable  loneliness. 

With  difficulty,  she  would  make  her  way  to  the 
door  and  rather  hurriedly,  because  she  knew  it  was 
a  weakness — she  who  was  so  deliberate  and  so 
strong — she  would  say,  "Write  to  me,"  and 
then  she  would  open  and  shut  the  door  herself  be- 


66 


BALLOONS 


cause  she  liked  to  take  away  the  picture  of  him 
standing  in  the  middle  of  his  sanctuary — her  sanc- 
tuary. .  .  . 

He  opened  his  eyes.  The  room  was  so  full  of  her 
that  he  took  a  deep  breath,  breathing  the  certainty 
of  her  into  his  soul.  And  he  seemed  to  hear  the 
words,  "Write  to  me."  He  smiled  very  tenderly. 
He  loved  her  to  have  this  one  little  wish — she  was 
so  far  above  and  beyond  concrete  manifestations — 
she  who  had  such  a  deep  contempt  for  imprisoning 
forms.  And  he  remembered  her  once  looking  at  a 
cheque  and  saying,  "The  figures,  after  all,  are  a 
limitation."  And  suddenly  in  front  of  him  he  saw 
the  blank  sheet  of  paper.  "She  shall  have  the  most 
wonderful  love-letter  ever  written  by  man  to 
woman,"  he  said  to  himself  and  at  the  very  bottom 
of  the  page,  he  put  one  initial.  Then  very  tenderly 
he  folded  it  up  and  addressed  it,  remembering  that 
it  was  thus  that  his  first  novel  had  been  dedicated — 

"To  Mrs. ."     "The  difference  is,"  he  thought, 

"that  this  is  a  masterpiece." 


VIII 

TEA  TIME 

ITo  Sylvester  Gates] 

SHE  lay  on  a  sofa  covered  with  white  marabou, 
her  head  sunk  deep  into  a  billowy  morass  of 
lace-coloured  satin  and  lace-coloured  lace.  She 
could  see  her  pointed  toes  emerging  and  her  arm 
dangling  over  the  edge  as  if  she  had  forgotten  it. 
On  her  finger  was  a  huge  emerald  ring,  a  splotch 
of  creme  de  menthe  spilt  on  the  whiteness  of  her 
hand.  She  felt  entrenched  and  anchored  in  an  alto- 
gether strong  position,  so  fixed  that  all  advances 
would  have  to  be  made  to  her.  This  gave  to  her 
voice  and  to  her  gestures  an  indolent  melodious 
security. 

As  the  door  opened  she  turned  her  eyes  roimd 
slowly,  suppressing  all  eagerness. 

"Mortimer  I"  She  wondered  if  disappointment 
could  be  as  easily  controlled  as  joy.  "How  nice  of 
you  to  come  and  see  me!" 

"Are  you  glad — really?"  He  was  kissing  her 
hand  with  an  unnecessary  mixture  of  shyness  and 
intensity. 

67 


68  BALLOONS 


"How  intolerably  literal  people  in  love  are,"  she 
thought  petulantly;  "always  forcing  significance 
into  everything." 

"Of  course,"  she  said,  smiling  lazily. 

"It  is  good  of  you  to  let  me  come  like  this."  How 
she  hated  his  humility,  but — "I  like  you  to,"  she 
murmured,  automatically  kind. 

"How  lovely  you  look!  Lovelier  than  ever  be- 
fore— as  lovely  as  ever  before."  And  then,  "I  love 
you." 

"Do  you  think  so?"  She  seemed  amused  and 
sceptical. 

"Do  you  doubt  it?"    He  clutched  her  wrist. 

"Not  if  you  put  it  like  that." 

"You  are  laughing  at  me,"  he  recognised  sadly. 

"Forgive  me."  She  put  her  hand  on  his,  lightly, 
caressingly,  her  voice  gentle  and  tender. 

^'But  you  do  know  it,  don't  you*?"  He  was  very 
insistent. 

("Does  he  think  that  I  am  blind  and  deaf  and 
that  no  one  has  ever  loved  me  before?"  she  won- 
dered irritably.) 

"I  think  you  think  so,"  she  prevaricated. 

"I  know,"  he  was  firm.  "I  shall  love  you  always." 

"Nonsense."  She  was  tart  with  realism.  "Why 
do  you  fly  in  the  face  of  all  experience  with  mean- 
ingless generalisations'?" 

"I  have  never  said  it  before." 


TEA    TIME  69 

*'Then  how  can  you  know*?" 

He  hated  her  barrister  mood. 

"Elaine,  aren't  you  glad  I  love  you*?" 

"Of  course."  She  closed  her  eyes  wearily.  They 
talked  of  other  things  and  she  remembered  how  in- 
telligent he  was.  It  had  been — during  these  last 
months — very  easy  to  forget.  But  though  her  in- 
terest was  concentrated,  his  attention  was  on  other 
things. 

"Elaine,"  he  blurted,  "are  you  going  to  the  coun- 
try to-morrow*?" 

"I  don't  know." 

"When  will  you  know?' 

"I  have  no  ideal" 

"But  when  shall  I  see  you  again?' 

"I  can't  tell." 

"Elaine,  please  do  put  me  out  of  my  misery." 

"Very  well  then —  I  shan't  see  you  again  this 
week." 

"Elaine!" 

"Yes." 

"Please." 

"Please  what*?" 

"I  am  sorry  I  bothered  you;  don't  punish  me.  I 
promise  not  to  ask  any  more  questions,  but  please 
let  me  know  when  you  come  back.  Even  if  you  only 
ring  me  up  on  the  telephone  I  shall  have  heard  your 
voice  I" 


70  BALLOONS 


"Very  well." 

"You're  not  angry  with  me,  are  youl" 

"Why  should  I  be  r 

"I  thought  perhaps  you  were.'* 

There  was  a  pause.  "Is  there  anything  amusing 
about  being  loved?"  she  thought;  "what  patient 
women  the  great  coquettes  of  the  world  must  have 
been  I  How  I  wish  I  were  a  crisp  intelligent  old 
maid,  with  a  talent  perhaps  for  gardening  or  books 
on  the  Renaissance !" 

"How  tired  you  look!"  He  had  taken  her  hand 
and  was  pressing  it  with  funny  little  jerky  grasps. 
"I  wish  you  belonged  to  me;  I  wouldn't  let  you 
spend  yourself  on  every  Tom,  Dick  and  Harry." 

"It  is  so  difficult  to  know,"  she  murmured,  "who 
is  Tom,  who  is  Dick,  or  who  is  Harry  I" 

"When  I  think  of  the  way  your  divine  sympathy 
is  imposed  upon — the  way  your  friends  take  advan- 
tage of  you !" 

"But  I  like  being  taken  advantage  of." 

"People's  selfishness  makes  me  sick.  Look  at  your 
white  face  and  your  drooping  eyelids,  and  your  tired 
little  smiles." 

"I  am  sorry." 

"Sorry !  Good  God !  My  beloved,  do  take  care 
of  yourself,  please.  Promise  me  not  to  see  any  one 
after  I  leave;  go  to  bed  and  pull  the  blinds." 

"But  I  am  expecting  Bill." 


TEA    TIME  71 

"Bill  will  be  all  the  better  for  not  getting  what 
he  wants  for  once." 

"But  supposing  he  doesn't  want  it*?'* 

"I  don't  understand." 

The  door  opened. 

"Bill !"  She  put  out  her  left  hand,  all  her  fea- 
tures lit  up  with  a  quiet  luminous  radiance.  His 
eyes  were  smiling,  but  his  mouth  was  grave. 

"Elaine !"  He  said  it  as  if  it  were  a  very  signifi- 
cant remark,  and,  though  he  hadn't  meant  to,  he  ca- 
ressed her  name  with  his  voice. 

"Mortimer  thinks  I  ought  to  go  to  bed  and  send 
you  away." 

"But  you  won't?" 

"Probably  not."  She  was  bubbling  over  with 
gaiety.     "I  am  very  weak-minded." 

The  two  men  were  not  looking  at  one  another, 
but  currents  of  hostility  flowed  between  them.  ^'  Bill 
had  not  fought  for  Elaine's  love;  it  had  come  to 
him  with  a  strange  inevitability.  He  had  no  fear 
of  losing  it  and  no  particular  desire  to  keep  it,  but 
the  thought  that  you  possess  something  that  some 
one  else  passionately  covets  is  always  exhilarating. 
He  would  never  have  admitted  it — he  could  never 
have  admitted  it,  but  she  was  to  him  like  an  object 
dangled  on  a  watch  chain — ^not  obtrusively  dis- 
played but  a  possession  recognised  by  everybody 
and  taken  for  granted  by  him.    Only  he  never 


72  BALLOONS 


seemed  bored  because  he  was  never  tired  of  mobilis- 
ing his  own  charms.  And  in  herself,  she  delighted 
him — it  was  only  in  her  relations  with  him  that 
she  got  on  his  nerves.  He  loved  to  see  her  with 
other  men  exercising  the  divine  arts  of  her  irresisti- 
bility, her  every  smile,  her  every  gesture,  the  intona- 
tions of  her  voice,  the  turn  of  her  head,  her  bubbling 
brilliance,  her  cool  indifference,  the  ice  of  her  intel- 
lect, the  glow  of  her  sympathy,  each  contributing  to 
the  masterpiece  of  her  coquetry.  But  with  him  she 
was  not  even  a  coquette — ^jerky,  passionate,  nervous, 
humble,  exacting,  dull — she  tired  him  to  death. 

"Well,  I  must  be  going."  Mortimer  spoke  doubt- 
fully. There  was  a  pause.  Then  Elaine  pulled  her- 
self together. 

"Why?' 

"I  have  so  much  to  do." 

"It  was  so  nice  of  you  to  come  and  see  me." 

"It  was  so  nice  of  you  to  let  me  come.  Please  re- 
member your  promise  to  let  me  know  when  you 
come  back." 

"Of  course."    He  was  gone. 

Wearily  she  shut  her  eyes.  "Do  you  remember 
the  time  when  Mortimer  was  charming*?" 

"Indeed  I  do;  he  was  quite  delightful  till  he  fell 
in  love  with  you.  He  is  really  a  warning  against 
loving." 

"You  hardly  heed  it,  do  youf"    Her  voice  was 


TEA    TIME  73 

very  bitter.  How  he  hated  the  entry  of  the  acidu- 
lated tragic  into  all  their  talks. 

"Perhaps  not."  He  felt  guilty,  knowing  how 
much  he  was  hurting  her.  "After  all  you  cannot 
ask  me  to  model  myself  on  the  man  who  bores  you 
most  in  the  world." 

She  smiled.  "What  a  good  reason  for  not  loving 
me: 

"The  best  I"  He  was  smiling  his  enchanting,  flat- 
tering smile  at  her — the  smile  that  always  seemed 
to  draw  you  into  the  Holy  of  Holies  of  his  confi- 
dence. 

"I  may  be  going  away  to-morrow,"  she  said. 

"May  you?" 

"But  I  shall  be  back  on  Thursday.  Shall  we  dine 
together  that  night?" 

"I  am  dining  with  a  Russian  friend  of  mine  who 
is  passing  through  London." 

"Friday,  then?" 

"Friday  I  am  going  to  the  country  for  the  week- 
end." 

"Then  it  will  have  to  be  Monday." 

"Yes,  I  am  afraid  so." 

"Afraid  that  you  will  have  to  dine  with  me?" 

"How  civil  you  are  I" 

There  was  a  pause.  She  wished  she  could  keep 
all  the  acid  out  of  her  voice.    He  thought  how  tire- 


74  BALLOONS 


some  women  were,  always  wanting  to  know  just 
what  you  were  going  to  do. 

"Bill,"  she  said,  holding  out  her  hand,  which  he 
took  rather  perfimctorily.  He  felt  like  a  dog  that 
knows  exactly  which  trick  follows  what  word  of 
command,  but  as,  from  force  of  habit,  he  invariably 
became  lover-like  when  he  was  absent-minded,  he 
stroked  her  arm  with  a  significant  caressing  gesture 
that  filled  her  with  joy. 

"Are  you  glad  I  love  you?"  she  murmured. 

"Of  course." 

"There  is  an  intelligent  woman,"  he  thought, 
"who  has  had  hundreds  of  men  in  love  with  her, 
making  a  demand  for  verbal  assurances  that  can't 
possibly  add  anything  to  her  peace  of  mind.  Either 
they  are  true  and  superfluous,  or  they  are  false  and 
transparently  unconvincing." 

"Bill,"  she  said,  reading  his  thoughts,  "you  can't 
understand  my  wanting  mere  words,  can  you*?" 

"No,"  he  said,  "not  you,  who  know  so  exactly 
what  they  mean." 

"Nevertheless,  they  are  sometimes  vaguely  com- 
forting and  reassuring — a  sort  of  local  ansesthetic." 
He  loved  her  insight,  her  curious  layers  of  detach- 
ment. 

"Bill,"  she  murmured,  "I  haven't  seen  you  for 
ages." 

"Not  since  two  this  morning." 


TEA    TIME  75 

"I  don't  count  a  ball;  besides  I  was  too  tired  to 
stop  dancing." 

"You  danced  like  an  angel  and  your  eyes  were 
shining  with  ecstasy,  lighting  hopes  all  round, 
though  of  course  I  knew  you  didn't  know  your  part- 
ner from  the  parquet — if  he  happened  to  be  as  good 
as  the  floor." 

"You  love  watching  me,  don't  you*?  much  bettei 
than  seeing  me."  How  he  wished  she  weren't  alway: 
right. 

"Remember  what  a  wonderful  drama  you  are? 
Elaine." 

"A  drama  in  which  you  have  played  lead.  But 
you  only  liked  the  first  act — the  Ccwnedy  Act,  and 
you  won't  even  enjoy  the  curtain  as  much  as  you 
think,  because  always  there  will  be  the  nasty  cer- 
tainty of  its  some  day  going  up  again,  and  then 
you  won't  even  be  in  the  wings." 

How  diabolically  clear-sighted  she  was ! 

"Bill,  dearest,"  she  held  out  her  hand,  "you  are 
reaching  the  moment  when  you  long  to  be  the  third 
person.  You  want  a  little  rest.  You  have  come 
to  the  point  in  the  life  of  every  lover  when  he  pre- 
fers the  husband  to  the  wife." 

But  this  was  more  than  he  could  stand.  A  hor- 
rible shadow  was  being  cast  over  his  future,  romance 
was  shrinking  before  his  eyes.  Frightened,  he  bent 
down  and  kissed  her.     "Darling,"  he  murmured. 


76  BALLOONS 


nestling  his  face  in  her  neck,  "what  nonsense  you 
talk." 

Love,  passion,  romance,  fidelity — all  were  vindi- 
cated by  this  deliberate  act. 

Her  doubts,  her  certainties,  subsided,  vanished — 
hypnotised  with  happiness.  "I  was  teasing,"  she 
lied. 

"I  must  go,"  he  said. 

"No." 

"Yes." 

"Not  just  this  moment,  please;  five  more  min- 
utes." 

"It  will  be  just  as  difficult  then." 

"But  I  shall  have  had  five  more  minutes." 

"How  practical  you  are!" 

He  stayed. 

"I  will  write  to  you." 

"Do." 

"And  I  shall  try  and  be  back  in  time  for  tea 
Thursday,  then  I  shall  see  you,  in  spite  of  your  stu- 
pid Russian." 

"If  I  can  get  away." 

"Can't  you  bring  him  to  dine  with  me*?" 

"I'm  afraid  not;  he  has  asked  some  one  else." 

"Shall  I  have  some  forms  printed  with  'I  miss  you, 
bless  you,'  for  you  to  sign  and  send  me  each  day." 

"Goose!" 


TEA    TIME  77 

"Well,  at  any  rate,  I  shall  have  you  properly  on 
Monday." 

"Yes." 

"And  please  make  a  great  effort  about  Thursday." 

"Yes." 

She  drew  him  down  to  her,  holding  his  face  in  her 
hands. 

"It  is  silly  to  love  at  my  time  of  life,"  she  said; 
"I  am  too  young.  It  is  like  wearing  a  lovely  new 
dress  to  climb  mountains  in." 

"You  will  always  be  young,"  he  said;  "you  are 
eternal." 

It  was  his  considered  view;  he  wished  she  weren't. 
Kissing  her  a  little  absently  he  walked  to  the  door; 
then  because  he  had  always  done  so,  he  walked 
back. 

"Bless  you,"  he  said.  It  was  perfunctory  and 
final.  The  shutting  of  the  door  turned  out  the  light 
in  her  eyes. 

"How  tired  I  ami"  she  thought,  and  then — 
"Tuesday,  Wednesday,  Thursday — Friday,  Satur- 
day, Sunday,  Monday." 


IX 

THE   END 

HE  knew  that  nothing  could  ever  possibly  hap- 
pen to  him  again  and  so  he  sat  on  his  sofa 
waiting — for  death,  he  supposed,  having  excluded 
every  other  possibility.  He  didn't  want  to  die,  he 
didn't  want  to  do  anything,  to  eat  or  drink  or  feel 
or  think — above  all,  he  didn't  want  to  move.  He 
had  shut  his  eyes  trying  to  shut  out  the  room.  Every 
bit  of  it  was  saturated  in  her,  everything  had  been 
consecrated — contaminated,  it  seemed  to  him  now — 
by  her  touch.  There  wasn't  a  patch  of  carpet  or 
chintz  that  didn't  belong  to  her  intimately  and  ex- 
clusively. Every  object  in  the  room  seemed  to 
pose  her  and  add  to  the  interminable  picture  gal- 
lery of  his  memory.  He  opened  his  eyes  and  saw  an 
uncut  pencil.  Here,  at  any  rate,  was  something 
new  and  independent — neutral  territory,  unsharp- 
ened  it  was  an  imloaded  pistol  and  he  wanted  to 
shoot.  At  her*?  He  was  bound  to  miss.  His  bit- 
terness was  no  medium  through  which  to  recapture 
her  magic  and  without  it  he  would  merely  be  forc- 
ing a  lay  figure  to  perform  vulgar  and  meaningless 
antics.     And  if  he  tore  her  to  bits,  it  would  be  an 

78 


THE    END  79 

indictment  of  himself,  not  of  his  gentlemanliness, 
that  had  long  ceased  to  mean  anything  to  him — 
but  of  his  taste.  Wearily,  he  shut  his  eyes.  It  was 
no  good  thinking  when  your  mind  had  become  a  cir- 
cle— a  very  small  circle.  He  remembered  something 
she  had  once  said,  "The  future  looks  like  the  present, 
stretching  interminably  ahead  in  the  shadow  of  the 
past."  She  had  always  understood  everything,  so 
she  didn't  deserve  to  be  forgiven  anything. 

The  front  door  bell  rang  and  at  once,  he  felt  sick 
and  faint.  A  ring  still  excited  him  as  much  as  it 
had  done  in  the  days  when  it  might  have  been  hers. 
It  was  a  ridiculous  state  of  nerves  that  he  had  never 
been  able  to  get  out  of. 

A  moment  later  she  was  in  the  room. 

An  absolute  limpness  had  come  over  him.  If  his 
life  had  depended  on  it,  he  couldn't  have  lifted  his 
hand.  The  surface  of  his  mind  examined  every  de- 
tail of  her — the  intense  whiteness  of  her  face  and 
the  severe  blackness  of  her  clothes,  the  fact  that 
she  wore  no  jewel  of  any  sort,  not  even  a  ring — 
except,  of  course,  her  wedding-ring.  He  had  never 
seen  it  before  and  it  seemed  a  gaudy  splash  of  colour 
out  of  harmony  with  the  rest  of  her. 

She  took  off  her  hat  and  laid  it  on  the  table. 
Then  she  walked  to  the  window,  touching  the 
things  she  passed  with  a  little  caressing  gesture.  He 
noticed  that  she  picked  up  the  unpointed  pencil  and 


8o  BALLOONS 


he  felt  a  little  desolate  feeling,  as  if  he  had  lost 
his  only  friend. 

Suddenly,  she  turned  round,  "I  am  leaving  Eng- 
land to-morrow,"  she  said. 

He  shivered  at  her  velvety  voice,  as  he  would 
have  shivered  had  his  hand  touched  suede.  "Well," 
his  voice  was  too  natural  to  be  natural,  "you  don't 
want  to  say  good-bye  to  me  again,  do  you*?" 

"Is  there  such  a  thing  as  'good-bye,'  "  she  mused; 
"won't  this  room  always  be  a  part  of  my  life?  Can 
one  end  anything?  A  chapter,  a  paragraph,  a  sen- 
tence even*?  Doesn't  everything  one  has  ever  done 
go  on  living  in  spite  of  subsequent  events'?" 

Relentlessly  he  brought  her  down  from  her  gen- 
eralisations. 

"You  have  ended  my  life,"  he  said. 

"Oh,  no."  She  was  sitting  beside  him  on  the  sofa. 
Gently  and  tentatively  she  put  her  hand  on  his. 
*'Take  it  away,"  he  said  roughly,  miserably,  con- 
scious that  he  was  behaving  like  a  hero  of  melo- 
drama, and  then  more  quietly,  "can't  you  spare  me 
anything?" 

"I  never  could  spare  any  one  anything,  could  I? 
Not  even  myself?" 

He  resisted  the  wistful  pleading  of  her  eyes,  tak- 
ing a  savage  pleasure  in  their  tired  look.  No  doubt 
the  preparations  for  her  journey  had  exhausted  her. 
Her  hand  was  lying  limply  on  the  arm  of  the  sofa. 


THE    END  81 

"What  does  it  feel  like  to  wear  a  wedding-ring*?'* 
he  asked  harshly. 

"It  feels  so  strange  at  first.  One  keeps  catching 
sight  of  it  and  being  made  to  feel  different  by  it. 
Somehow,  it  really  matters,  it  really  seems  to  mean 
something." 

"Indeed*?"  He  was  ashamed  of  the  cheap  cyni- 
cism of  his  tone.  It  wasn't  what  he  had  meant  to 
say. 

She  waited  a  few  minutes  and  then  she  got  up 
and  put  on  her  hat,  deftly  arranging  her  veil  with 
almost  mechancial  quickness  and  skill.  Then  she 
pulled  on  her  gloves.  How  well  he  knew  the  swift 
deliberateness  of  her  movements.  Without  turning 
round  she  left  the  room.  He  heard  her  go  into  the 
dining-room  ...  A  few  minutes  later,  he  heard  her 
come  out  again.  He  heard  her  open  and  shut  the 
front  door  .  .  .  He  went  to  the  open  window. 
Would  she  look  up*?  Surely  that  was  the  test  of 
whether  or  not  she  was  still  the  same — the  eternal. 
In  the  past,  whatever  had  happened  between  them, 
she  had  never  been  able  to  resist  that  final  peep,  half 
to  see  whether  he  was  there,  half  to  send  up  a  little 
tiny  semi-binding  glance  of  reconciliation.  Some- 
times, when  he  had  been  very  angry  with  her  he  had 
watched  from  behind  the  curtains.  To-day,  he  was 
at  the  open  window,  waiting  to  send  her  the  smile 
which  was  to  obliterate  the  past  half-hour,  the  past 


82  BALLOONS 


six  months.  It  was  not  to  be  so  much  a  smile  as  a 
look,  a  benediction. 

She  got  into  her  taxi.  Through  the  far  window- 
she  told  the  driver  where  to  go.  She  never  glanced 
behind  her,  she  never  glanced  up. 

He  shut  the  window  with  a  shiver.  "The  end," 
he  murmured. 


X 

MISUNDERSTOOD 

[To  John  Maynard  Keynes] 

HER  greatness  was  an  accepted  fact.  Her  fame 
had  not  been  a  dashing  offensive  but  an  in- 
evitable advance  quietly  over-running  the  world. 
People  who  never  read  knew  her  name  as  well  as 
Napoleon's.  There  was,  somehow,  something  a  lit- 
tle irreverent  about  being  her  contemporary.  To 
attend  the  birth  of  so  many  masterpieces  gave  you 
the  feeling  of  a  legendary  past  invading  the  present. 

A  few  great  critics  wrote  wonderfully  about  her, 
but  a  vast  majority  of  them,  trained  only  in  witty 
disparagement  and  acute  disintegrating  perception, 
became  empty  and  formal  in  face  of  an  unaccus- 
tomed challenge  to  admiration  and  reverence. 

It  is  only  the  generous  who  give  to  the  rich,  the 
big  who  praise  the  big;  the  niggardly  salve  their  con- 
sciences in  doles  to  the  humbly  poor,  making  life 
into  a  pilgrimage  of  greedy  patrons  in  search  of 
grateful  victims. 

June  was  radiantly  removed  from  the  possible 
inroads  of  charity.     You  couldn't  even  pretend  to 

»3 


84  BALLOONS 


have  discovered  her — unless,  of  course,  you  had 
met  her — then  you  were  quite  sure  that  you  had. 
Her  friends  explained — as  friends  always  do — that 
it  was  what  she  was,  not  what  she  did,  that  mat- 
tered, that  her  letters  and  her  conversation  were  far 
more  wonderful  than  her  books,  that  she  was  her 
own  greatest  masterpiece. 

It  was  irritating  to  be  forced  out  of  it  like  that, 
but  when  you  had  seen  her  you  began  doing  the 
same  thing. 

It  was  impossible  not  to  want  to  tell  people  that 
her  hair  was  like  a  crisp  heap  of  rusty  October  beech 
leaves,  that  she  always  had  time  for  you.  And  then 
you  began  to  explain  that  she  was  happily  married, 
which  led  you  to  the  fact  that  she  was  happy,  which 
reminded  you  that  you  were  happy,  by  which  time 
no  one  was  listening  to  you.  But  it  didn't  seem  to 
matter.  People  would  ask  such  silly  questions  about 
her.  "Does  she  admire  Dostoievski?"  they  would 
say,  and  you  would  answer,  "She  has  the  most  en- 
chanting brown  squirrel " 

George  wasn't  thinking  any  of  those  things.  His 
mind  didn't  work  like  that.  He  was  eating  a  huge 
breakfast,  with  the  "Times"  propped  up  against  his 
coffee  pot.  The  two  and  a  half  columns  about  her 
new  book  aimoyed  him.  He  hated  a  woman  to  get 
herself  talked  about — June,  too,  of  all  people. 
There  was  nothing  new-fangled  about  June.    Why, 


MISUNDERSTOOD  85 


his  mother  loved  her  and  she  was  so  pretty  and  so 
fond  of  clothes  and  babies.  There  was  really  no 
excuse  for  her  sprawling  over  his  paper  when  she 
ought  to  have  been  moving  discreetly  through  the 
social  column  like  his  other  female  friends. 

There  was  really  no  reason  for  a  happy,  cared-for 
woman  to  write.  It  wasn't  even  as  if  she  had  to 
earn  her  own  living.  Richard  ought  to  put  his  foot 
down,  but  Richard  didn't  seem  to  mind.  One  might 
almost  have  thought  that  he  was  proud  of  his  wife's 
reputation,  if  one  hadn't  known  him  to  be  such  a 
manly  man.  After  all,  a  woman's  place  was  in  her 
home — or  the  Court  Circular.  She  should  never 
stray  from  birth,  deaths  and  marriages  to  other  parts 
of  the  paper.  Even  the  sporting  news  (though  he 
liked  a  woman  to  play  a  good  game  of  golf  or  a  good 
game  of  tennis)  was  hardly  the  place  for  a  lady. 

George  knew  that  he  was  working  himself  up  and 
he  hated  doing  that  at  breakfast.  So  he  started  un- 
doing the  elaborate  knot  of  a  brown  paper  parcel  to 
soothe  his  nerves — George  never  cut  string.  And 
out  of  it  emerged  her  book — her  new  book.  It  was 
beautifully  bound  (she  knew  that  he  liked  a  book  to 
look  nice)  and  on  the  fly  leaf  was  the  inscription: 
"A  leather  cover,  a  little  paper  and  my  love." 

It  was  as  if  she  had  sent  him  a  box  or  a  paper 
weight  or  a  clock.  It  wasn't  the  gift,  it  was  the 
thought  that  mattered.    She  knew  that  he  had  never 


86  BALLOONS 


read  any  of  her  books,  but  they  were  as  good  a  ve- 
hicle for  her  affection  as  another. 

"You  are  the  only  person,"  she  had  said  to  him, 
**to  whom  my  books  are  really  tokens,"  and  she  had 
smiled  very  radiantly  as  if  he  were  the  only  person 
who  had  discovered  the  real  secret  of  her  books. 
George  reflected  sadly  that  he  was  the  only  person 
who  understood  her.  Why,  it  was  maddening  to 
think  that  any  one  reading  those  paragraphs  in  the 
"Times"  might  imagine  her  middle-aged  and  ugly 
and  spectacled.  And  how  were  thej^  to  know  that 
her  knowledge  of  cricket  averages  was  probably 
greater  than  that  of  the  Selection  Committee*? 
Probably,  too,  they  pictured  her  with  short  hair, 
June,  with  her  crinkling  crown  of  autumn  beach 
leaves;  and  thick  ankles,  June  with  her  Shepperson 
legs;  and  blunt  inky  fingers,  June  with  her  rosy 
pointing  nails  and  her  hands  like  uncurling  fans. 

His  mind  went  to  other  things,  her  low  hard  vol- 
leys and  the  lithe,  easy  grace  with  which  she  leapt 
over  the  lawn-tennis  net.  In  thinking  of  her,  the 
irritation  her  writing  caused  him  decreased.  It 
seemed  altogether  too  irrelevant.  June  was  the  sort 
of  woman  one  did  things  for.  Helpless,  he  reflected 
with  satisfaction,  thinking  of  her  tininess.  Why,  he 
could  lift  her  up  with  one  hand.  George  always 
mixed  up  physical  phenomena  with  psychological 
fact.    Small  women  were  in  need  of  protection ;  pale 


MISUNDERSTOOD  87 


women  were  delicate;  clever  women  were  masculine 
— the  greatest  of  all  crimes.  June  might  think  it 
funny  to  be  clever,  but  no  one  could  deny  that  she 
was  feminine — the  sort  of  woman  who  appealed  to 
you  to  do  little  tiny  things  for  her  (things  you  would 
have  done  in  any  case),  as  if  they  were  very  impor- 
tant and  very  dramatic  and  very  difficult.  George 
liked  the  sort  of  woman  who  said  to  him:     "Mr. 

Carruthers,  you  who  know  everything "    It  was 

apt,  of  course,  to  lead  you  into  a  lot  of  trouble,  but 
that  was  one  of  the  necessary  results  of  being  a  man 
and  having  a  superior  intellect.  June  wasn't  like 
that.  She  never  asked  you  for  legal  advice  or  finan- 
cial tips.  She  simply  thought  it  most  angelic  of  you 
to  have  fetched  her  coat  and  so  clever  of  you  to  have 
noticed  that  it  was  getting  chilly.  And  when  you 
sent  her  flowers  on  her  birthday,  she  would  explain 
to  you  the  flow  of  delight  she  had  felt  and  perhaps  a 
tiny  little  moment  of  surprise  until  she  realised  that 
of  course  it  wasn't  surprising  at  all,  but  just  exactly 
what  she  knew  at  the  bottom  of  her  heart  you  would 
do — you,  who  were  such  a  wonderful  friend.  Only 
the  flowers  were  far  more  beautiful  than  she  could 
have  imagined  and  how  had  you  been  able  to  find 
them? 

George  had  a  photograph  of  June  on  his  writing 
table.  People  were  apt  to  stop  short  at  it  and  say: 
"Is  that  the  great  June  Rivers,  the  writer*?"    And 


88  BALLOONS 


he  would  brush  the  question  aside — one  must  be 
loyal — and  say:  "She  is  a  friend  of  mine,"  rather 
stiffly,  as  if  they  had  said  that  she  had  run  away 
from  her  husband  or  been  found  drunk. 

He  looked  at  it  this  morning,  and  suddenly  he  felt 
that  he  must  see  her — a  feeling  she  frequently  in- 
spired. He  knew  that  she  hated  the  telephone,  so 
he  sent  her  a  little  note. 

"Dear  June:  Thank  you  for  your  beautifully- 
bound  book.  May  I  come  round  this  afternoon  *?  I 
long  to  see  your  hair." 

He  wondered  why  he  had  put  that :  it  was  a  silly 
sort  of  thing  to  say;  so  he  scratched  out  the  "hair" 
very  carefully  so  that  you  could  see  nothing,  and 
substituted  "you."  Then  he  wrote  "George"  and, 
after  a  moment's  hesitation,  added  the  postscript: 

"Of  course  you  saw  that  Macaulay  had  taken  four 
wickets  for  two  runs"?" 

Half  an  hour  later  her  answer  reached  him. 

"George  dear,  please  come  this  afternoon.  I  was 
so  hoping  you  would.  Come  whatever  time  suits 
you.  I  shall  be  happy  and  patient  and  impatient 
waiting  for  you."  ("That  doesn't  mean  anything," 
he  growled  to  himself.  "Pity  she  can't  write  more 
clearly.")  "Of  course  I  saw  about  Macaulay. 
June." 

At  five  he  was  on  her  doorstep,  and  a  very  few 
moments  later  he  was  holding  both  her  hands.    They 


MISUNDERSTOOD  89 


seemed  somehow  to  have  got  lost  in  his.  Her  hair 
was  crisper  and  rustier  than  ever,  swirling  about  in 
competitive  overlapping  ripples.  Her  eyes,  like  a 
shallow  Scotch  brook,  were  laughing  at  him:  like 
transparent  toffee  they  were  or  burnt  sugar  or  amber. 
"June,"  he  said,  and  his  voice  was  funny  and  thick, 
"I  had  forgotten  how  pretty  you  were." 

"That  was  just  a  little  plot  you  were  making 
with  yourself  to  please  me,"  she  said. 

They  sat  happily  on  a  sofa  and  talked  about  the 
wonderful  way  Mr.  Fender  managed  the  Surrey 
bowling;  they  discussed  the  iniquities  of  the  Selec- 
tion Committee;  they  decided  that  no  woman  who 
played  the  base  line  game  could  ever  be  quite  first 
class.  They  considered  the  relative  merits  of  Cromer 
and  Brighton  from  the  point  of  view  of  George's 
mother ;  they  agreed  that  being  braced  was  one  thing 
and  being  overbraced  another.  Then  June  told 
George  that  he  ought  to  marry,  and  George  said  that 
he  was  not  a  marrying  man,  and  June  said  that  men 
became  the  worst  old  maids  and  that  a  man's  place 
was  in  the  home  and  George  thought  that  she  had 
got  it  wrong  by  accident. 

June  was  perfectly  happy.  She  loved  talking  to 
George — George  who  adored  her  without  knowing 
that  she  had  genius,  only  that  she  had  sympathy — 
who  had  no  idea  that  she  was  a  great  woman,  only 


90  BALLOONS 


that  she  was  a  charming  one.  He  was  looking  at 
her  with  a  worried  expression. 

"June,"  he  said,  "you  look  tired." 

"Oh,  but  I'm  not  a  bit." 

He  put  her  feet  up  and  covered  them  with  a 
shawl. 

"I  wish  you  would  stop  writing,"  he  said.  "What 
good  do  books  do?  Health  is  the  only  thing  that 
matters." 

"Loving  is  the  only  thing  that  matters,"  she  mur- 
mured, "loving  and  being  loved." 

"Well,"  (George  thought  it  so  like  a  woman  to 
go  off  at  a  tangent  like  that),  "you've  got  Richard." 

"Richard,"  she  twinkled,  "is  not  like  you.  He 
loves  my  books." 

"He  ought  to  know  better,"  George  asserted  se- 
verely, and  at  that  moment  in  he  came. 

"George!"  Richard  was  jubilant.  "Have  you 
heard  the  news'?" 

"What  news?"  George  was  thinking  of  the  Car- 
pentier-Lewis  fight  due  that  night. 

"Jime  has  been  awarded  the  Nobel  prize." 

"How  splendid !"  George  looked  a  little  puzzled. 
"Is  it  for  life  saving?" 

"Yes,"  June  put  in  quickly. 

"I'm  not  at  all  surprised."  George  beamed  at  her. 
"You  always  were  as  plucky  as  they  made  'em  and 
gifted.    Do  you  remember  how  charmingly  you  used 


MISUNDERSTOOD  Ql 


to  sing?  'Not  a  big  voice,  but  so  true,'  Mother  used 
to  say,  and  she's  a  great  judge." 

"Your  mother  has  always  been  so  sweet  to  me." 

"What  a  talented  woman  like  you  wants  to  write 
for  beats  me." 

George  had  got  back  to  his  grievance  again,  but 
she  lured  him  on  to  the  subject  of  irises  on  which 
they  were  both  experts,  and  it  was  not  till  just  be- 
fore dinner  that  he  hurried  away. 

Then  suddenly  he  remembered  that  he  hadn't 
asked  her  whose  life  she  had  saved.  How  silly 
and  how  selfish  I  It  was  so  like  her  not  to  talk  about 
herself,  and  then  he  saw  on  a  patch  of  posters: 
"June  Rivers  awarded  the  Nobel  prize,"  and  though 
he  was  v€ry  late  he  stopped  to  buy  an  evening  paper. 


XI 
COUNTERPOINT 

[To  THE  Marchese  Giovanni  Visconti  Venosta] 

MATTHEW  half  shut  his  eyes — as  he  always 
did  when  he  particularly  wanted  to  see. 

"For  the  first  time  in  my  life,"  he  said,  "I  regret 
my  myopia.  Confronted  with  this  room,  imagina- 
tion pales  before  sight," 

Virginia  looked  round — at  the  strawberry  ice  bro- 
cade, at  the  gilt,  at  the  Bouchers — so  painstaking 
and  so  painful — at  the  palms  that  seemed  to  con- 
ceal manicurists  and  barbers. 

"Look,"  he  continued,  "at  our  hostess.  I  am  sure 
her  ears  and  her  nose  take  off  at  night.  Her  hair 
is  a  libel  on  horsehair  and  dye." 

"Oh," — Virginia's  smile  was  playing  like  a  light 
over  his  face — "think  of  the  days  when  her  eyes 
were  like  stars  and  her  ears  like  shells  and  her  hair 
was  curling  all  over  the  place." 

"Virginia,"  his  voice  was  tender,  "where  you  are 
there  are  no  more  palms,  wigs  turn  into  hair,  rouge 
into  blushes " 

"Matthew,"  she  said,  "you  are  a  romantic  and  I 

am  the  only  person  in  the  world  who  knows  it." 

92 


COUNTERPOINT  93 


"You  are  the  only  person  in  the  world  with  whom 
I  am  in  love." 

"For  the  moment." 

"How  practical  you  are  I"  he  teased,  "full  of  fore- 
thought and  arriere  pensees.  Isn't  the  moment  the 
capture  of  the  divine*?" 

She  sighed  a  little — wise  with  the  wisdom  of 
frustrated  dreams,  and  she  thought  how  happy  he 
was — Chappy  with  the  happiness  of  iridescent,  ever- 
changing  whimsies. 

"Virginia,  does  that  young  man  love  you?" 

"Which  one?' 

"The  one  in  spectacles." 

"I  don't  think  so." 

"Are  you  sure?" 

"One  can  never  be  sure." 

"Of  course  if  he  doesn't,  it  proves  that  I  am  right 
in  saying  that  spectacles  are  fatal.  They  prevent 
people  from  using  either  their  eyes  or  their  imagi- 
nation.   Shall  I  go  up  to  him  and  ask  him*?" 

"He  would  answer:  'I  don't  understand.'  " 

"And  I  would  explain :  'Virginia  is  the  only  lady 
in  orange,'  and  he  would  look  at  you  for  a  moment 
or  two  and,  holding  out  his  hand  in  an  ecstasy  of 
gratitude,  he  would  say :  'Thank  you.  Yes,  I  love 
her.'  " 

"Matthew,"  she  murmured,  "what  an  unsuitable 
name." 


94  BALLOONS 


They  sat  in  silence,  interfered  with  only  by  the 
necessity  of  convincing  passers-by  that  they  did  not 
want  to  be  interrupted. 

"Matthew,"  she  said,  "do  you  see  that  tall  fair 
man?" 

"The  blond  beast?" 

"With  a  very  tall  woman." 

"With  gold  hair  and  eyes  like  cows  in  pictures  of 
Christ  in  a  manger?" 

"Yes.    He  loves  her." 

"How  suitable." 

"But  it  isn't.    He  has  a  red-haired  wife." 

"How  unsuitable." 

"Matthew,  do  be  serious.    I  like  him." 

"How  complicated." 

"I  told  him  I  hated  his  air  of  perfunctory  but  re- 
strained passion,  and  he  laughed." 

"Any  one  would  have." 

"And  we  made  friends." 

"You  always  make  friends  with  everybody." 

"You  are  unsympathetic." 

"I  am,  I  confess,  a  little  bewildered  by  the  situ- 
ation. Do  I  understand  that  you  are  suffering  from 
an  unrequited  passion  for  a  man  who  is  illegitimately 
attached  to  a  magnificent  cow  and  legitimately 
bound  to  a  bewitching  squirrel?" 

"Matthew,  you  really  are  provoking.  What  I 
mean  is  that  he  is  making  a  fool  of  himself." 


COUNTERPOINT  95 


"Why  not^' 

"Because  he  might  do  something  irrevocable." 

"Lucky  man." 

She  looked  at  him  in  desperation — a  desperation 
half  exasperation  and  half  enchantment.  If  only 
Matthew  would  sometimes  appear  serious — there  is 
something  so  restful  about  appearances.  Instead 
of  which  he  always  remained  superlatively  unsatis- 
factory and  superlatively  irresistible. 

"Virginia,"  he  said,  "let  us  leave  all  this  and  drive 
round  the  park  and  I  will  talk  to  you  like  a  lover 
in  a  bad  book  and  I  will  mean  every  word  I  say." 

"We  can't  go  yet,"  she  murmured. 

"Virginia," — his  voice  was  urgent — "I  will  be  di- 
vinely pompous." 

That  was  so  like  him.  He  always  tried  to  safe- 
guard the  simplest,  most  sincere  moments  of  his  life 
by  inverted  commas.  It  was  a  little  trick  that  al- 
ways irritated  her. 

"What  an  artist  you  are,"  she  remarked  acidly. 

"Yes,  indeed,"  he  assented,  smiling  her  out  of  her 
irritation.  And  then :  "I  have  known  you,  Virginia, 
ever  since  I  can  remember." 

"You  told  me  that  the  first  time  we  met." 

"It  is  still  true." 

"How  magnificent." 

It  was  her  turn  now  to  ward  off  what  she  was 


96  BALLOONS 


longing  for.  To  be  serious  with  Matthew  was  a 
form  of  disarmament  you  always  regretted. 

"And  knowing  you  as  I  do,  I  recognise  the  cru- 
sading light  in  your  eye  and  I  must  point  out  to  you 
that  your  altruistic  excursions  have  not  always  ended 
by  tidying  up  the  situation." 

"Alas,  no." 

"Now,  why  plunge  into  the  eternal  triangle*? 
There  is  really  no  role  for  you  unless  you  propose  to 
supplant  the  cow.    What,  by  the  way,  is  her  name?" 

"Grace." 

"I  don't  like  the  statuesque,"  he  said,  wrinkling 
up  his  eyes.  "Look  at  her  ecstatic  vacant  expression. 
A  dangerous  combination." 

Virginia  wished  she  had  not  given  him  this  theme. 
He  would  weave  it  into  such  marvellous  patterns 
that  she  would  never  be  able  to  get  it  out  intact 
again. 

"I  must  have  some  more  facts,"  he  said.  "What 
is  the  squirrel  called?" 

"Estelle." 

"And  the  hero?" 

"Edgar." 

"More  and  more  suitable.  What  prophetic  par- 
ents !  How  admirably  they  kept  their  heads  at  the 
font.  The  squirrel  is  very  vivacious — is  it  a  brave 
front,  a  blind  eye  or  a  shallow  heart?" 


COUNTERPOINT  97 


"Estelle  is  a  courageous  woman  and  discreet  with 
the  unpierceable  reticence  of  spontaneity." 

"How  delightful.    I  might  try  Estelle  myself." 

"You  might." 

"If  I  said  'I  love  you,'  would  she  laugh  or  cryl" 

"Laugh,  I  think." 

"With  a  little  hidden  tear  in  her  voice?" 

"I  have  my  doubts  about  the  hidden  tear." 

"Then  she  would  be  no  good  to  me.  I  like  mixed 
effects." 

At  this  moment  Grace  and  Edgar  danced  by.  They 
were  both  radiantly  fair  and  a  little  colossal  in  scale. 
Her  eyes  were  half  shut  and  her  mouth  was  half 
open. 

"Matthew,"  Virginia  was  firm,  "something  must 
be  done.  How  can  he  scale  the  heights  of  a  great 
passion  carrying  that  hold-all*?" 

"An  empty  hold-all  isn't  so  very  heavy." 

"It  is  if  you  can't  put  it  down." 

"Virginia,"  he  said,  "your  missionary  zeal  appals 
me.  Why  invade  the  situation*?  What  are  you 
going  to  tell  the  man*?    That  he  has  children*?" 

"No.  That  he  is  throwing  his  life  into  a  cul- 
de-sac." 

"He  won't  believe  you." 

"No." 

"And  it  will  probably  end  by  his  falling  in  love 


98  BALLOONS 


with  you  and  think  what  a  terrible  mess  the  cow 
and  the  squirrel  will  make." 

Edgar  came  up  to  them. 

"Will  you  give  me  the  pleasure  of  a  dance*?" 

"I  should  love  to." 

Virginia's  apricot  had  become  a  strand  in  the  pat- 
tern of  the  ball-room. 

A  parma  violet  lady  settled  on  Matthew  like  a  fly. 

"I  can't  think  how  you  have  anything  left  to  say 
to  Virginia,"  she  remarked  disagreeably.  "But  I 
suppose  you  simply  make  love  to  her." 

"It  is  not  simple  at  all." 

"Let  us  go  and  sit  somewhere,"  Edgar  was  saying, 
and  they  went  into  another  room. 

All  of  our  real  indiscretions  in  life  come  in  the 
form  of  generalisations.  A  name  is  a  warning,  and 
we  really  give  ourselves  away  in  abstract  philoso- 
phisings  applied  by  an  intelligent  companion  to  the 
particular. 

"Why  should  we  accept  ready-made  standards'?" 
Edgar  said.  "None  of  the  great  governing  forces  of 
life  can  fit  into  a  ditch  of  conventions." 

"No." 

"Sometimes  you  have  to  set  out  to  sea  and  turn 
your  back  on  the  old  familiar  coastline." 

"In  a  pleasure  boat  for  an  excursion." 

"In  a  sailing  ship  for  distant  seas." 


COUNTERPOINT  99 


"Argosies  have  a  way  of  turning  into  penny 
steamers." 

"You  ought  not  to  say  that — you  of  all  people, 
who  sail  the  seas  in  a  tub  with  a  sunshade." 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "I  am  at  the  mercy  of  the  winds. 
But  you  have  a  harbour  and  an  anchor  and  a  flag  to 
fly." 

"You  are  thinking  that  I'm  a  fool." 

"Yes." 

"One  must  scxnetimes  cut  one's  losses." 

"One  must  sometimes  cut  one's  gains — a  much 
more  difficult  thing." 

"You  can't  throw  away  light." 

"The  world  is  brighter  with  your  back  to  the  sun." 

"Virginia,"  he  said,  "I  have  made  up  my  mmd." 

"What  can  I  say?  I  am  helpless.  I  see  you  going 
shipwreck  on  dummy  rocks — the  water  let  in  by  a 
penknife." 

"You  are  cruel." 

"Don't  you  think  I  know  those  frontiers,  when 
paradise  seems  but  a  step  away,  but  you  know  that 
it  is  a  step  you  can't  retrace?" 

"Why  should  you  want  to  go  backwards?" 

She  looked  past  him  into  space. 

"Behind  us,"  she  murmured,  "lie  so  many  things 
— ^memories  of  childhood,  dim  happy  echoes,  prim- 
roses and  hoops  and  peace  shot  with  laughter.  When 
you  have  taken  your  step  you  daren't  look  back.  Re- 


lOO  BALLOONS 


membering  hurts  too  much.  And  so  you  look  for- 
ward— always  forward,  knowing  that  the  promised 
land  is  behind  you." 

Grace  was  dancing  round  and  round,  wondering 
how  one  stopped.  Away  from  him  she  felt  restless 
and  nervous  and  will-less  and  incomplete,  like  a 
frustrated  animal  lost  and  impotent,  with  smoulder- 
ing rage  in  her  heart  and  sulky  fires  in  her  eyes. 
Why  didn't  he  come  to  release  her,  to  calm  the 
tearing  fever  of  her  blood? 

Again  and  again  she  walked  through  the  library 
and  always  he  was  on  the  sofa  with  Virginia — Vir- 
ginia in  her  orange  haze  melting  into  cushions;  and 
sometimes  he  was  bending  right  forward,  his  whole 
body  curved  into  urgency.  And  when  she  passed,  he 
half  looked  up  with  the  tail  end  of  a  smile  falling 
as  it  were  accidentally  in  her  direction. 

Estelle  laughed  and  talked,  her  feet  twinkled,  her 
eyes  danced.  Marriage,  she  said,  was  an  altogether 
delightful  thing,  quite  different  from  what  people 
thought 

Matthew  was  introduced  to  her.  He  explained 
that  love  was  so  important  that  it  could  only  be  dis- 
cussed lightly.  He  said  that  her  hair  reminded  him 
....  he  wished  he  could  think  of  what,  but  he  had 
such  a  bad  memory  for  metaphors.  It  took  him  all 
his  time  to  remember  that  a  harp  was  like  water 
and  Carpentier  like  a  Greek  god.     It  was  funny. 


COUNTERPOINT  lOl 


wasn't  it,  to  have  such  a  weak  head.  He  thought 
it  came  from  hay  fever — he  always  had  hay  fever 
during  the  third  week  of  May.  It  came  entirely 
from  honeysuckle. 

Estelle  said  that  she  would  like  to  sit  in  the 
library.  Grace  was  in  a  comer  pulling  monosylla- 
bles out  of  her  mouth  like  teeth. 

Virginia  was  still  in  the  middle  of  the  sofa,  a  dis- 
solving mass  of  orange  mist.  Edgar  was  talking 
away  all  risk  of  his  suiting  the  action  to  the  word. 
Estelle  was  dimpling. 

"Do  you  remember,"  she  said  to  Matthew,  "that 
orange  is  flame-colour'?" 

"By  Jove,  yes,"  he  said,  "oriflammes  and  hell 
fire." 

A  low  murmur  came  from  the  sofa. 

"Will  you  introduce  me  to  your  husband '?"^ 
Matthew  asked. 

They  all  talked  together. 

"By  the  way,  Virginia,"  Matthew  said,  "the 
young  man  does  love  you." 

"Dear  me,  how  very  nice." 

"It  only  required  me  to  point  it  out  to  him." 

"W^as  he  pleased^" 

"Delighted.  By  the  way,  Mr,  Wilmot," — 
Matthew  turned  to  Edgar — "do  you  ever  wear  spec- 
tacles?' 


XII 
VILLEGIATURA 

[To  Marcel  Proust] 

WHAT  a  fool  he  had  been  to  come.  These 
wooden  walls  creaking  at  a  touch,  and  the 
floors  responding  like  an  animal  in  pain  to  the  light- 
est footstep.  Not  that  Marie  Aimee  had  light  foot- 
steps— far  from  it.  She  clattered  about  with  the 
happy  noisiness  of  a  good  conscience  and  perfect 
health.  In  her  hands  the  opening  of  a  door  became 
an  air-raid  and  yet  what  could  you  do,  confronted 
with  her  rosy  face  beaming  with  a  child-like  confi- 
dence in  giving  pleasure  and  satisfaction. 

No,  it  was  entirely  his  own  fault.  Everything 
was  what  he  might  have  expected.  The  sea  was 
just  where  he  had  been  told  it  would  be,  the  air  was 
relentlessly  bracing,  the  cleanliness  of  the  Hotel 
Bungalow  reminded  you  of  a  shiny  soaped  face 
which  had  never  known  powder.  It  was  all,  he  re- 
flected, quite  horrible.  The  salt-laden  wind  blowing 
the  sand  up  from  the  dunes,  the  hard  bright  sun- 
shine, the  effect  everything  gave  you  of  having  been 
painted  with  the  six  colours  of  a  child's  rather  cheap 
paint-box. 

102 


VILLEGIATURA  IO3 


"A  different  man,"  she  had  said  he  would  feel. 
Well,  he  felt  it  already — the  lassitude  of  his  body 
feebly  revolting  against  the  impending  bracing,  his 
eyes  watering  at  the  glare.  Health  and  inspiration, 
Marthe  had  said,  dreamless  sleep,  an  insatiable  ap- 
petite and  perfect  peace  in  which  to  finish  his  novel. 
"Think  how  quiet  it  will  be,"  she  had  said.  As  if  the 
country  were  ever  quiet,  crowded  as  it  was  with  locos 
and  dogs  and  sabots.  Surely  peace  meant  Paris  in 
August,  with  every  one  away,  thick  carpets  and  a 
noiseless  valet. 

Maurice  imagined  himself  merging  into  a  huge 
armchair,  just  able  to  see  a  square  glass  vase  of 
Juliette  roses — ^gilt  petals  lined  with  deep  pink  vel- 
vet. Why  on  earth  were  there  never  any  flowers  in 
the  country*?  And  no  one  would  disturb  him — no 
one.  Privacy  is  only  possible  in  a  big  town.  Every 
detail  of  life  in  the  Hotel  Bungalow  was  revealed  to 
him  in  a  series  of  sights,  sounds  and  smells.  And 
should  a  fellow  lunatic  arrive,  how  was  he  to  avoid 
him?  At  every  meal  there  would  be  little  exchanges 
of  the  banal,  after  dinner  a  game  of  billiards — even 
possibly,  horror  of  horrors,  potential  excursions 
planned  with  zest  and  good  fellowship.  And  all  the 
time  he  would  be  saying  "No,"  more  and  more  un- 
graciously, or,  worse  still — and  far  more  likely — 
saying  "yes." 

And  then  where  would  his  novel  be?    Not  that 


104  BALLOONS 


it  was  possible  any  way  to  write  in  a  place  where 
the  sun  was  always  in  your  eyes,  the  wind  blew  your 
paper  away  and  creaking  boards  made  sitting  in  your 
bedroom  out  of  the  question. 

Marthe  was  a  fool,  given  up  entirely  to  hygiene 
and  plans  for  other  people.  "You  will  come  back 
bubbling  over  with  physical  fitness,  your  dear  face 
all  tanned,"  she  had  said.  "Dear"  indeed !  It  was 
simply  a  bribe.  He  was  being  bribed  for  his  own 
good.  And  to  think  that  like  a  great  gaby  he  had 
been  shoved  off  to  the  sea  by  one  term  of  endear- 
ment, and  to  a  place,  too,  where  there  was  neither 
shade  nor  shadows,  simply  miles  and  miles  of  bright 
monotonous  sea,  three  dusty  cornflowers,  two  be- 
draggled poppies  and  the  sun  all  around  you. 

Tanned,  indeed !  Why  his  face  would  be  all  blis- 
ters and  his  eyes  bloodshot. 

The  insensitiveness  of  women ! 

If  Marthe  were  here  she  would  bathe  before  break- 
fast, feed  the  hens,  find  the  eggs,  encourage  the  cook, 
pat  the  dog,  listen  to  the  story  of  Marie  Aimee's  life, 
pick  the  cornflowers,  praise  the  cook,  churn  the  but- 
ter, play  with  the  children,  climb  on  to  the  hay  cart, 
collect  shells  on  the  beach,  lie  in  the  sun,  let  the 
sand  trickle  through  her  fingers  and  explain  with 
perfect  sincerity  that  it  was  the  most  delightful  place 
in  the  world. 

But  he  didn't  like  paddling  or  shrimping  or  sail- 


VILLEGIATURA  IO5 


ing  or  farmyard  life.  He  wanted  a  velvet  lawn,  a 
cedar,  a  rose  garden,  lavender,  a  sun  dial,  iced  lem- 
onade and  solitude.  Or  he  wanted  his  own  cool 
apartment,  with  drawn  sunblinds,  vases  full  of  flow- 
ers, his  immense  writing  table,  and  a  deserted  Paris 
around  him. 

Women  always  did  to  you  as  they  wanted  to  be 
done  by.  That  sort  of  literal  interpretation  of  Chris- 
tianity showed  such  a  lack  of  imagination.  It  was 
no  good  telling  Marthe  that  you  didn't  like  the  sea, 
she  simply  wouldn't  believe  it. 

"Think  of  the  sunset  reflected  in  the  wet  sand,'* 
she  would  say,  and  if  you  told  her  that  you  didn't 
want  to  think  about  it,  that  it  was  no  fit  subject 
for  an  active  mind,  she  would  be  hurt. 

In  any  case  no  one  had  a  right  to  make  you  do 
things  for  your  own  good.  It  was  a  horrible  form 
of  self-sacrifice.  If  Marthe  had  said,  "Please  go  to 
St.  Jean-les-Flots  and  pick  me  a  poppy,"  he  would 
have  been  delighted,  but  to  stay  at  the  Hotel  Bun- 
galow in  the  interests  of  his  own  health  was  a  very 
different  matter. 

Marie  Aimee  was  putting  a  pot  with  one  red  ge- 
ranium in  it  on  his  writing  table.  It  was,  she 
explained,  still  very  early  in  the  season  but  Monsieur 
must  not  be  discouraged.  Later  it  became  very  gay 
with  dancing  and  Japanese  lanterns  in  the  garden. 


106  BALLOONS 


The  Hotel  Bungalow  would  be  quite  full,  whereas 
now  there  was  only  Monsieur  and  a  lady. 

"A  lady?' 

"But  yes,  Monsieur." 

"A  young  lady?" 

"A  lady  of  a  certain  age." 

Maurice  hoped  that  it  would  be  an  uncertain  age. 
Of  course  every  one  over  twenty  would  seem  old  to 
Marie  Aimee.  Probably  the  lady  was  on  that  ex- 
quisite frontier  line,  the  early  thirties,  when  the  bud 
is  already  unfurling  its  petals,  angles  have  softened 
into  curves,  and  the  significant  is  stirring  in  every- 
thing like  a  quickening  child.  Thirty,  the  age  of 
delicate  response,  of  subtle  tasting,  divorced  equally 
from  the  ignorant  impetuosity  of  youth  and  the  des- 
perate clutchings  of  middle  age.  How  he  disliked 
young  girls  with  their  sunburn,  their  manly  strides, 
their  meaningless  giggles,  their  eternal  nicknames  I 
And,  over  their  heads,  a  warning  and  a  trade  mark, 
that  sword  of  Damocles — marriage. 

Maurice  was  feeling  a  little  happier.  As  he 
walked  into  lunch  he  felt  a  real  twinge  of  curiosity. 
Ridiculous  it  was — why  he  was  getting  quite  roman- 
tic, imagining  an  exquisite  creature  on  a  holiday  from 
her  husband.  That  was  no  doubt  the  result  of  the 
Hotel  Bungalow.  On  the  velvet  lawn  with  the  ce- 
dar, the  rose  garden,  the  sun  dial  and  the  iced  lem- 
onade, he  would  have  been  enjoying  to  the  full  his 


VILLEGIATURA  IO7 


usual  ironic  detachment,  but  St.  Jean-les-Flots 
would  throw  any  one  to  romance. 

He  walked  into  the  dining  room.  At  the  far  end 
with  her  back  to  him  sat  the  lady.  She  wore  a  white 
coat  embroidered  with  black,  a  white  skirt,  a  white 
hat,  with  a  white  lace  veil.  On  the  chair  beside 
her  lay  a  Holland  sunshade  lined  with  green.  It 
was,  he  thought,  deplorable,  and  indicated  yellow 
spectacles.  Her  feet  were  very  small  and  gave  you 
the  impression  of  an  insecure  foundation  to  her  body. 
Her  back  was  broad.  She  was  certainly  over  forty. 
Forty,  thought  Maurice,  the  dangerous  age — the  des- 
perate age.  From  forty  to  fifty,  the  flower  in  full 
bloom,  the  period  of  engulfing  passions,  of  urgent 
transitory  satisfactions.  For  how  many  women  must 
it  not  be  a  ten  years'  death  struggle. 

"What  a  place,"  Maurice  was  disgusted;  "it  is 
driving  me  to  melodrama." 

The  lady  got  up  with  a  certain  waddling  stateli- 
ness  (perhaps  after  all  she  was  fifty).  Her  clothes 
fell  into  perfection — she  walked  slowly  and  calmly 
with  appraising  steps.  The  lace  veil  was  over  her 
face.  She  did  not  forget  her  sunshade,  her  bag,  or 
her  handkerchief.  Louis,  the  waiter,  opened  the 
door  for  her.  She  sailed  out  like  a  gondola  on  the 
stage,  or  Lohengrin's  swan.  Her  movements  gave 
an  effect  of  invisible  wheels. 

During  the  afternoon  she  remained  undetectable, 


lo8  BALLOONS 


which  was  a  tour  de  force  at  St.  Jean-les-Flots, 
where  the  landscape  was  a  successful  conspiracy 
against  concealment,  and  a  sunshade  could  be  seen 
for  miles.  Maurice  had  a  tiresome  feeling  that  she 
was  lying  out  somewhere  with  that  horrible  sunshade 
over  her  head  and  a  novel  by  Gyp  on  her  lap.  Had 
she,  he  wondered,  ever  read  any  of  his  books?  Per- 
haps when  she  found  out  his  name  she  would  come 
up  to  him  and  say:  "Are  you  the  Mr.  Maurice 
Van  Trean?"  And  when  he  had  bowed  in  the  af- 
firmative, she  would  add  that  she  liked  "Sur  les 
Rives"  best  of  his  books — "she  had  read  them  all 
many  times — and  especially  that  marvellous  descrip- 
tion of  Camille's  return  to  her  husband." 

Maurice  walked  for  miles  down  the  hard  glaring 
white  road.  It  was  the  most  uncomfortable  thing 
he  could  think  of  doing,  and  when  you  are  deter- 
mined to  enjoy  nothing  there  is  a  certain  voluptuous 
satisfaction  in  a  maximum  of  unpleasantness.  The 
air  was  burning  and  solid.  An  occasional  convol- 
vulus drowned  in  dust  straggled  in  weary  clinging 
grace  by  the  roadside — a  pathetic  symbol,  he  re- 
flected, of  the  pale  refined  irrelevant  women  who 
fade  ineffectually  beside  the  highways  of  life.  He 
thought  of  Marthe  with  her  urgent  pulsating 
rhythm,  the  rhythm  he  remembered  bitterly,  that  had 
brought  him  here.  He  wished  vindictively  that  she 
were  beside  him,  the  hard  burning  surface  of  the 


VILLEGIATURA  lOQ 


road  biting  through  the  soles  of  her  shoes.  He  would 
walk  on  and  on  till  there  were  blisters  on  her  feet  and 
her  steps  were  lagging.  His  teeth  were  set  in  the 
grim  satisfaction  of  revenge. 

"This  is  the  country,"  he  would  say.  "Do  you  feel 
the  health-giving  sea  breeze  you  told  me  about?" 

He  stopped  suddenly.  Walking  towards  him  was 
the  lady.  The  offensive  sunshade  was  over  her  head, 
but  her  veil  was  up.  She  was,  he  supposed,  forty-six 
— ^no,  forty-four.  Her  eyes  were  wide  apart,  dark 
and  indolent  and  long — brown  or  blue  they  might 
have  been.  Her  face  was  wide  and  so  was  her  mouth 
with  lips  like  curtains  drawn  across  the  teeth.  Her 
cheek-bones  were  high  and  her  skin,  like  marshmal- 
low,  was  marbled  with  the  bright  yellow  lights  and 
bright  blue  shadows  of  early  afternoon.  There  was  a 
curious  grace  about  her  broad  solid  figure,  an  unhur- 
ried indifferent  grace,  as  if  she  said  to  herself,  "I 
shall  please  at  my  own  time."  She  was  not  pretty. 
Her  clothes  belonged  to  her  as  essentially  as  her 
limbs. 

Maurice  took  off  his  hat. 

"Forgive  me,  Madame,  but  I  think  that  we  are 
both  living  at  the  Hotel  Bungalow." 

"I  think  so,  too,"  she  said  drily. 

He  thought  that  she  thought  that  he  was  taking  a 
liberty,  which  made  him  suppose  that  she  was  not 


no  BALLOONS 


quite  a  lady,  which  made  him  accuse  himself  of  vul- 
garity. 

And  then  she  laughed,  and  his  accusations,  both 
of  her  and  of  himself,  fled. 

They  walked  back  together  and  he  explained  to 
her  just  how  much  he  hated  the  sea,  the  heat,  the 
Hotel  Bungalow,  the  cook,  and  Marie  Aimee's  foot- 
steps. He  explained  how  anxious  he  had  been  about 
her — how  he  had  longed  to  see  her  face — how  much 
her  sunshade  had  depressed  him — how  her  lace  veil 
had  been  a  personal  enemy. 

She  said  that  she  adored  the  country  .  .  . 

He  told  her  that  only  in  big  towns  could  you  find 
peace  or  flowers. 

She  said  the  Hotel  Bungalow  had  "un  caractere 
assez  special  .  .  ." 

He  did  not  listen  to  her  comments — they  were 
mere  breathing  places.  On  the  subject  of  the  sea 
he  was,  he  thought,  almost  witty,  with  a  touch  of 
real  indignation. 

She  said  the  sea  was  her  passion  ... 

He  decided  that  she  was  an  obstinate  woman — 
entetee.  How  ridiculous  to  love  the  sea — esf)ecially 
for  some  one  who  pretended  to  like  the  country. 
The  two  were  practically  incompatible.  Could  she 
explain  her  point  of  view*? 

The  sea,  she  said,  was  such  a  wonderful  es- 

CaOc    •    •    • 


VILLEGIATURA  111 


He  was  thrilled.  A  thousand  explanations  of  her 
presence  at  the  Hotel  Bungalow  jostled  one  another 
in  his  mind. 

Of  course  he  quite  understood  what  she  meant 
about  the  sea.  It  had  a  certain  spaciousness  and  it 
did,  so  to  speak,  quarantine  you  from  life.  For  in- 
stance, in  a  rowing  boat,  it  was  impossible  to  feel 
the  importance  of  being  a  snob. 

That  was  not,  she  said,  exactly  what  she 
meant  .  .  . 

Maurice  was  annoyed.  He  was  accustomed  to 
people  who  were  proud  to  share  his  meanings. 

Madame  would  perhaps  be  able  to  explain  .  .  . 

It  was  not,  Madame  murmured,  a  question  of  be- 
ing able  to  explain,  but  of  being  able  to  inter- 
rupt .  .  . 

Maurice  flushed  and  relapsed  into  sulky  silence. 
He  watched  his  companion  trotting  by  his  side,  tak- 
ing three  little  steps  to  each  one  of  his.  He  took 
a  childish  pleasure  in  making  his  strides  as  wide  as 
possible,  upsetting  the  rhythm  of  her  walk.  The 
brim  of  her  hat  hid  her  eyes.  He  felt  that  his  un- 
certainty as  to  their  expression  gave  the  matter  an  in- 
terest that  it  did  not  intrinsically  possess.  Even  if 
she  were  smiling,  what  did  it  matter? 

Suddenly  she  turned  to  him. 

"Has  Monsieur  anything  more  to  conceal  from 
me?"  she  asked. 


112  BALLOONS 


Maurice  capitulated.  It  was  a  delightful  for- 
mula. He  wished  that  he  had  thought  of  it  him- 
self. It  was  she,  he  said,  who  had  been  hiding 
things  from  him.  Her  eyes,  for  instance.  All  this 
time  he  had  been  wondering  about  the  expression 
of  her  eyes. 

"And  yet  you  deny  the  potency  of  the  country," 
she  sighed,  "the  miracle-working  country,  which 
compels  a  young  man  of  twenty-seven  to  wonder 
about  the  expression  of  an  old  woman  of  forty- 
four." 

"Madame,"  he  said,  "I  am  very  old.  I  have 
ceased  to  take  myself  seriously.  You  are  very  young, 
for  you  can  force  others  to  treat  you  with  curiosity 
and  respect." 

She  reminded  him  that  eight  minutes  ago  he  had 
taken  himself  seriously.  "It  was  you  who  made 
me,"  he  retorted,  "you  have  given  me  back  my 
youth." 

They  went  on  like  that  for  quite  a  long  time — 
gallant  lawn-tennis — long  base  line  rallies  with  an 
occasional  smash.  And  then  he  said  that  he  must 
be  indiscreet — specifically  so.  Why  had  she  come 
to  St.  Jean-les-Flots*? 

It  was,  she  explained  meditatively,  an  escape  (he 
noticed  that  it  was  the  second  time  that  she  had 
used  that  word).     The  Hotel  Bungalow  was  very 


VILLEGIATURA  II3 


clean,  the  food  was  good,  the  air  was  marvel- 
lous .  .  . 

She  pulled  herself  together. 

When,  you  took  a  holiday,  she  said,  you  had  to 
make  a  careful  choice  between  old  acquaintances  and 
new  ones.  Which  was  likely  to  be  the  more  tiring? 
She  herself  always  went  to  new  places  at  the  wrong 
time  of  year.  Then  it  was  a  case  of  friendship,  or 
nothing.  The  people  who  visited  watering  places 
out  of  season  were  always  either  impossible  or  en- 
chanting. V^ry  often  amusingly  impossible  and 
temporarily  enchanting,  but  so  much  the  better. 
There  is  a  certain  safety  in  the  transitory. 

Is  Madame  married?  Maurice  asked  abruptly. 
It  was  the  sort  of  question  that  had  to  be  asked 
brusquely,  or  not  at  all. 

"Yes — No — Yes.  That  is  to  say,  I  have  a  hus- 
band. He  will  probably  come  here  for  a  day  or  two 
later.    He  is  tres  comme  il  faut." 

"Surely  you  do  not  blame  him  for  coming  to  see 
you." 

She  shrugged  her  shoulders. 

"It  is  magnificent,  but  it  is  not  life.  One  is  not 
always  young  enough  to  permit  oneself  these  phan- 
tasies. At  fifty-six  it  is  silly  to  waste  two  days  vis- 
iting some  one  you  don't  want  to  see.  But  there, 
Edmond  is  like  that.  Oh  I  the  stability  when  he 
says  'my  wife.'   It  is  superb.  It  must  be  grand,  too, 


114  BALLOONS 


when  he  says  'ma  maitresse';  he  has  the  property 
sense.  And  how  he  adores  women,  woman,  all 
women,  any  woman.  Even  sometimes  me.  And 
when  he  doesn't,  he  keeps  the  habits.  Toujours  des 
petits  soins.  He  never  goes  out  of  training,  even  at 
home." 

"He  sounds  charming  to  live  with." 

"Ah,  yes.  That  is  it.  He  is  charming.  One  can- 
not bear  it.  To  have  the  five-finger  exercises  of  his 
irresistibility  played  on  one.  To  be  the  stiff  piano 
on  which  he  practises  but  never  plays.  It  is  too 
much.  And  one  remembers  the  days  when  one  was 
the  concert  grand.    Pouf.    It  is  not  agreeable." 

There  was  a  pause.  Maurice  knew  that  she  was 
going  to  say  a  great  many  other  things. 

But  they  had  reached  the  Hotel  Bungalow.  Re- 
gretfully they  parted. 

He  thought  that  she  was  a  very  remarkable 
woman  indeed. 

She  thought  how  like  her  husband  he  was.  Her 
husband  twenty-five  years  ago. 

At  dinner  she  still  was  in  black  and  white.  Black 
covered  with  filmy  laces,  soft  and  shadowy  and  mys- 
terious. After  dinner  they  sat  on  the  terrace  and 
looked  out  at  the  inky  relentless  sea. 

"Being  sensible  is  no  good  at  all,"  she  said  with 
sudden  passion.  "Courage  is  the  only  helpful  vir- 
tue; when  I  married  I  was  young  and  very  pretty 


VILLEGIATURA  II5 


and  I  had  thought  about  life  a  lot.  I  knew  that 
in  men  fidelity  had  the  importance  that  they  gave  to 
it.  To  a  few — very  few — it  matters — but  in  most 
cases  unfaithfulness  is  not  a  psychological  thing  at 
all ;  it  is  simply  a  temporary  excess  like  getting  drunk 
— squalid,  if  you  like — but  not  touching  your  real 
relationships.  Women  bluff  a  lot  on  the  subject  and 
many  are  fools.  They  believe  in  the  same  law  for 
both  sexes.  It  is  a  ridiculous  fallacy.  Only  Exi- 
mond  was  different.  He  loved  women — psychology 
ically.  He  was  therefore  inconstant,  which  is  the 
real  sin  against  marriage.  He  was  a  great  lover,  an 
artist.  Every  woman  was  to  him  what  a  canvas  is 
to  a  painter,  a  violin  to  a  violinist.  The  colours  and 
the  sounds  he  got  were  marvellous.  Sometimes  he 
would  try  impossible  subjects — for  fun — but  al- 
ways he  could  bring  some  sort  of  harmony  out  of 
everything.  Ma  foi,  it  amuses  me  to  watch  him  now 
— ^now  that  it  is  difficult,  and  he  is  fifty-six  and  I 
don't  love  him — but  then,  when  everything  was  easy 
and  he  was  twenty-seven  and  I  cared — then  it  was 
— well,  it  was  different." 

The  way  that  her  voice  opened  and  shut  reminded 
him  of  a  sea  anemone. 

"It  is  not  the  way  to  talk  to  a  stranger,  is  it*?"  she 
said  abruptly,  "but  I  feel  as  if  I  had  known  you  for 
a  long  time.  For  twenty-five  years,  to  be  exact," 
she  added. 


Il6  BALLOONS 


Maurice  felt  curiously  tongue-tied.  He  longed  to 
tell  her  about  Marthe.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life 
he  was  finding  a  confidence  difficult  to  make.  He 
wondered  why. 

"Bon  soir,  Monsieur,"  she  said,  and  she  walked 
up  to  bed  with  a  characteristic  lack  of  pause  or  hesi- 
tation. 

Maurice  woke  up — was  woken  up — knowing  that 
he  had  something  to  look  forward  to.  Sleepily  he 
wondered  what  it  was  while  patterns  spread  over 
his  semi-consciousness — dreamily  he  saw  Marthe  in 
a  filmy  lace  dress  over  black  and  he  felt  himself  try- 
ing to  play  on  a  grand  piano,  every  note  of  which 
was  a  sea  anemone.  Then  he  woke  up  completely, 
and  with  a  delightful  rush  he  remembered  Madame 
and  all  of  the  marvellous  things  that  she  had  told 
him  and  all  of  the  significant  things  he  had  not  yet 
said  to  her. 

He  walked  down  to  breakfast  whistling.  In  the 
courtyard  he  patted  the  dog  and  lifted  the  patron's 
son  on  to  his  shoulder,  then  he  asked  the  patronne 
if  the  cook  had  a  name  and  whether  he  might  some 
day  come  and  watch  her  churn  butter.  In  the  din- 
ing room  he  praised  the  coffee,  and  admired  the  ge- 
raniums. St.  Jean-les-Flots  must  have  a  particu- 
larly fine  soil  for  geraniums,  and  what  air  I  Why, 
he  felt  a  different  man  already. 

Madame  Marly — he  had  discovered  her  name — 


VILLEGIATURA  II7 


did  not  appear  till  lunch.  They  bowed  to  one  an- 
other, and  each  talked  a  little  to  the  waiter.  It  was 
delightful  to  keep  their  pleasure  at  arm's  length. 
Coffee  on  the  terrace  brought  them  together. 

"You  are  right,"  she  said,  "the  country  is  an  im- 
possible place.    It  makes  one  talk." 

"I  love  the  country,"  he  said. 

"And  then  the  sea.  It  is  always  going  on  with- 
out you." 

"I  have  a  passion  for  the  sea,"  he  murmured. 

"I  would  like  to  wring  the  neck  of  the  cook,  chlo- 
roform the  dog,  buy  Marie  Aimee  some  lawn  tennis 
shoes,  and  have  a  daily  box  of  flowers  from  Paris." 

"They  shall  be  ordered  at  once." 

"I  should  also  like,"  she  was  looking  out  to  sea, 
"to  fill  the  hotel  with  people." 

"You  flatter  me,"  he  murmured. 

"Perhaps,"  she  added,  "it  would  be  simpler  to  go 
away." 

"Simpler  but  impossible." 

"Why  impossible?' 

"The  air  is  unique.   The  Hotel  Bungalow  .  .  ." 

"Please  don't,"  she  begged. 

"Besides,  for  the  first  time  in  my  life  I  am  becom- 
ing discreet." 

"Ah,  no,  my  friend,  believe  me.  It  was  merely 
that  you,  too,  found  it  difficult  to  interrupt." 

"I  did  not  want  to  interrupt." 


Il8  BALLOONS 


"There  you  had  an  advantage  over  me.  I  was 
longing  to  bring  your  remarks  about  the  sea  to  an 
imtimely  end." 

Her  laugh  was  the  most  confidential  thing  in  the 
world.  You  felt  as  if  she  had  given  you  an  unlim- 
ited credit  of  intimacy.  He  thought  that  she  was 
looking  ten  years  younger  in  her  creamy  crepe  de 
Chine  dress,  with  her  big  straw  hat,  which  seemed 
to  have  conquered,  without  an  effort,  the  perfection 
and  simplicity  of  the  absolute. 

"What  is  it  called?"  he  asked  fingering  it. 

"Crepe  surprise." 

He  asked  her  to  describe  its  lines,  but  she  refused. 

"Ne  parlons  pas  robes,"  she  said. 

They  decided  to  go  for  a  drive. 

The  cocher  explained  that  he  had  lost  his  wife, 
but  that  "Lisette  etait  un  tres  bon  petit  cheval." 

They  laughed — at  him,  at  one  another,  at  the  sun, 
at  the  sea,  at  everything.  He  told  her  about  the 
convolvuluses,  and  she  said  he  ought  to  write  a  book. 

He  told  her  his  name. 

She  puckered  her  forehead  a  little,  and  looked  to 
him  for  help. 

He  explained  rather  stiffly  that  he  had  written 
three  novels,  a  book  of  short  sketches,  a  book  of  light 
verse,  and  a  phantasy  on  Algeria. 

She  asked  what  they  were  called.    He  told  her. 

She  asked  which  was  the  best. 


VILLEGIATURA  1  I9 


He  said  that  "Sur  les  Rives"  had  the  best  things 
in  it.  Perhaps  it  was  less  finished  than  some  of 
the  others,  but  it  was  on  a  bigger  scale,  the  concep- 
tion was  more  interesting. 

She  asked  what  the  conception  was. 

He  told  her  that  it  was  about  a  woman  who,  out 
of  affection  for  her  husband,  and  deep  intrinsical 
virtue,  refuses  to  become  the  mistress  of  the  man  she 
passionately  adores.  He  goes  away  and  she  gives 
herself  to  the  first  person  she  meets  with  a  look  of 
him.  Her  original  great  struggle  has  exhausted  all 
her  powers  of  resistance. 

Madame  Marly  was  silent. 

"It  is  true,"  she  said,  "for  big  things  we  have  big 
resistances,  and  for  little  things  little  resistances. 
And  so  we  live  our  lives  in  small  weak  lapses — ^not 
driven  by  hate  or  love,  but  by  pique  or  boredom,  low- 
ering our  flag  to  salute  a  pleasure  boat,  not  a  bat- 
tleship. Pouf,"  she  made  a  little  gesture  of  disgust 
that  he  was  beginning  to  know.  "We  occupy  the 
places  that  other  people  make  for  us.  We  curl  on 
their  divans,  we  sprawl  in  their  gutters,  we  sit  proud- 
ly on  the  pedestals  they  put  for  us,  we  occupy  their 
altars,  and  when  we  are  alone,  what  happens  to  us? 
We  dissolve  into  air." 

"Not  you,"  he  said.  "I  feel  it.  You  are  so  inde- 
pendent, so  sure.  Where  are  your  hesitations'? 
Your  very  doubts  are  challenges  to  truth." 


120  BALLOONS 


"Challenges  to  truth,"  she  said.  "It  is  a  nice 
phrase." 

Driving  back  into  the  sunset  they  were  silent.  He 
wrapped  her  cloak  round  her,  and  once  he  kissed  her 
hand,  but  it  didn't  feel  as  if  it  belonged  to  her.  Her 
thoughts  had  taken  her  right  away  out  of  his  pres- 
ence, out  of  the  carriage  beyond  the  sunset.  Where 
had  they  taken  her?    He  wondered. 

That  night  she  came  down,  dressed  in  glowing  ap- 
ricot— "fold  after  fold  to  the  fainting  air." 

As  always,  her  clothes  seemed  part  of  her,  without 
ends  or  beginnings,  flowing  from  her,  a  streaming 
enhancing  accompaniment.  He  asked  her  if  her 
dress  were  nymphe  emue  or  feuille  morte.  He  was 
proud  of  knowing  those  two  names.  She  said  it  was 
neither.  He  begged  her  to  tell  him,  but  she  refused 
rather  abruptly  to  discuss  it.  He  said  he  loved  her 
clothes — that  he  would  like  to  know  .  .  . 

"Pour  r amour  de  Dieu,  ne  parlous  pas  robes." 

He  wondered  at  her  irritability,  but  he  obeyed. 

They  went  out  on  to  the  terrace.  The  sea  was 
black  and  angry,  all  the  waves  at  cross  purposes. 

"What  is  your  name?" 

"Paula." 

"What  will  you  say  when  I  tell  you  that  I  love 
you,  that  I  want  you?" 


VILLEGIATURA  121 


"You  won't  tell  me  because  you  will  know  that  I 
don't  want  you  to." 

Her  voice  was  a  part  of  the  wind. 

"Why  don't  you  want  me  to^"  he  was  urgent — 
harsh  with  desire. 

"Because  it  all  happened  twenty-five  years  ago." 

He  didn't  understand. 

"Because — because  there  are  some  things  you 
can*t  do  twice — like  your  book,  they  are  the  big 
things  that  create  a  strength  of  resistance.  Because 
they  are  the  beautiful  things  that  belong  to  our 
dreams.  Because  they  are  of  a  magic  fabric,  into 
which  you  can  weave  no  facts." 

It  was  dark  and  he  could  not  see  her.  The  end 
of  his  cigarette  was  a  bright  spot  in  the  night.  The 
sea  and  the  wind  were  the  counterpoint  of  her  voice. 

He  felt  unreal  and  remote  and  small.  A  tiny 
strand  in  the  vast  design  of  destiny. 

She  got  up  and  walked  in.    He  did  not  move. 

"Thank  you  for  the  flowers." 

The  sun  was  glittering  frivolous  and  cynical. 

The  box  he  had  ordered  from  Paris  had  arrived. 
First  there  was  a  mass  of  Juliette  roses — gilt  and 
velvet — then  a  staircase  of  sweet  peas,  flame- 
coloured,  coral,  crimson,  magenta,  purple,  bronze 
and  black. 

Both  together  they  drank  in  the  blaze  of  colour. 


122  BALLOONS 


Ecstatically  he  said  to  her, 

"You  can't  thank  me^  can  you*?  They  are  too 
beautiful." 

"Perhaps  not,"  she  said,  "but  it  was  beauty  un- 
leashed by  you." 

He  looked  at  her  with  adoring  eyes.  She  gave  you 
phrases  which  lit  torches  in  your  soul. 

They  walked  down  the  beach  together.  The  sea 
was  light  and  mutinous. 

"How  untransparent  it  is,"  he  said,  "lapis  lazuli 
and  turquoise  and  chrysoprase — ^no  emeralds  or 
aquamarines,  or  sapphires." 

"How  are  we  to  get  in  our  purple  without  an 
amethyst?" 

"I  don't  know." 

"That  is  what  comes  from  not  reading  the  Book 
of  Revelations,"  she  said. 

They  saw  big,  dissolving,  poisonous  jellyfish  in 
the  sea,  mysteriously  without  lines — and  tidy  slabs 
of  jellyfish  on  the  beach.  They  found  a  starfish,  and 
wondered  who  came  to  dance  a  sword  dance  round 
it.  They  picked  up  shells  that  looked  as  if  they  had 
fallen  out  of  fading  sunsets  or  glimmering  dawns — 
they  looked  into  pools  of  shutting  and  opening  sea 
anemones. 

They  never  noticed  a  sardine  box  or  an  old  boot. 

They  were  happy. 


VILLEGIATURA  123 


Over  her  head  was  a  scarlet  paper  sunshade.  It 
looked  like  a  huge  tropical  flower. 

"Paula,"  he  said — and  his  eyes  opened  to  her  like 
a  magic  trap  door. 

That  night  they  stayed  indoors. 

"Tell  me  the  things  that  life  has  given  you,"  he 
said,  "the  things  that  have  made  you  so  rich." 

"If  I  am  rich,"  she  said,  "it  is  frcwn  the  things 
that  /  have  given." 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "but  why  do  you  impoverish  your- 
self at  my  expense*?" 

"Please,"  she  said,  "don't  talk  about  that.  There 
are  in  all  of  us  exposed  places — you  can  call  them 
pain  or  romance — Sehnsucht  or  memory — ^but  they 
are  the  sanctuaries  of  our  hearts — they  cannot  be 
violated." 

"Paula,"  he  said,  "you  have  made  too  much  of 
life.  You  have  made  it  into  the  sort  of  hope  that  is 
always  a  disillusionment." 

"Yes,"  she  murmured  very  low. 

"Why  were  you  so  unpractical?"  his  bantering 
tone  revived  her. 

"I  have  done  for  some  one  (even  for  you,  perhaps) 
what  I  have  never  done  for  myself;"  she  was  smiling. 
"I  will  tell  you  a  story.  There  was  once  a  man 
who  loved  me.  He  was  born  with  everything — a 
marvellous  name,  great  riches,  beauty,  a  magnetic 
quality  that  I  have  never  seen  equalled.     I  always 


124  BALLOONS 


reproached  him  with  having  added  nothing  to  his 
inheritance — ^no  glory — no  achievement — 'I  have 
spent,'  he  would  say,  shrugging  his  shoulders. 
'Wasted,'  I  retorted  tartly.  'If  you  like.  I  have 
never  admitted  my  past  or  my  future  as  barriers 
— or  even  frontiers — to  my  actions.  I  have  lived 
without  forethought  or  arriere  pensee — without  the 
weakness  of  regrets  or  the  stinginess  of  precautions,' 
and  then  he  turned  to  me — his  eyes  were  half  shut 
and  his  voice  was  muffled  as  if  a  flood  were  batter- 
ing on  the  door  of  his  dispassionateness,  'I  have  had 
everything  in  life  except  you,'  he  said.  I  smiled  at 
him,  a  little  sadly,  a  little  cynically.  'It  is  I  who 
have  given  you  the  greatest  gift,'  I  said.  'I  have 
given  you  a  regret  and  an  illusion.  Vous  avez  done 
tout  eu.'    That  night  he  killed  himself." 

"And  you,  Paula,  did  you  feel  a  murderess*?" 

"No,  a  saviour." 

She  was  dressed  in  pale  lilac — the  coolest  lilac  in 
the  world.  It  rippled  round  her  like  loving  caress- 
ing waves. 

"What  is  your  dress  called,  Paula*?" 

"Oasis,"  she  said.  "  'Indian  summer'  would 
have  been  a  better  name." 

"Tell  me  about  it." 

"Why  do  you  always  want  to  know?" 

"I  am  writing  a  book." 


VILLEGIATURA  125 


"Tant  pis." 

She  was  out  of  temper. 

The  flowers  arrived. 

Old-fashioned  pink  roses,  coral  carnations,  purple 
stocks,  pink  pinks,  mauve  orchids,  moss  roses,  pat- 
terned chintz-like  phlox. 

"Oh!"  she  said,  and  for  a  moment  she  shut  her 
eyes. 

Then: 

"Tell  me  about  her,"  she  said. 

"Marthe?" 

"Is  that  her  name*?" 

"She  is  vibrant." 

"But  of  course.    What  does  she  look  like?" 

"Her  hair  is  like  a  dirty  new  coin.  You  feel  that 
you  could  polish  it  into  brightness.  Her  eyes  are 
like  tea — yellow  camomile  tea.  Her  mouth  is  big 
and  rather  grave.  There  are  electric  waves  of  alive- 
ness  running  all  through  her." 

"I  do  not  like  her." 

"No?" 

"No." 

"Why  not?" 

"All  that  irrelevant,  interfering  vitality.  It  is 
dangerous." 

"And  slumbering,  mysterious  magnetism,  is  that 
not  dangerous?" 

"That,  too." 


126  BALLOONS 


There  was  a  thunderstorm  and  the  air  got  cool. 
Madame  Marly  had  a  headache  and  dined  in  her 
room. 

The  next  day  was  grey — ^grey  air,  a  grey  sky,  a 
grey  countryside,  a  grey  sea — not  luminous,  lustrous 
grey,  but  opaque  chiffon  drawn  across  the  world. 

Paula's  flowers  had  arrived — lemon-coloured  hol- 
lyhocks, blue  and  mauve  and  purple  delphiniums, 
filmy  love-in-the-mist,  primrose  antirrhinums,  snowy 
Madonna  lilies  with  golden  middles,  huge  creamy 
roses,  tiny  yellow  rosebuds,  straggling  larkspurs. 

She  was  dressed  in  a  grey  whipcord  coat  and  skirt 
with  a  grey  swathed  turban.  She  looked  distant — 
on  the  brink  of  disappearance — ^not  so  much  as  if 
she  were  going  to  travel  but  as  if  she  were  going  to 
vanish. 

She  regarded  the  flowers  with  grave  concentration. 
It  was  as  if  she  felt  for  them  a  stern  passionate  de- 
votion. She  took  one  of  the  white  roses  and  stroked 
it — as  if  it  were  a  shy  mother  with  her  first  child. 
Then  she  said: 

**I  want  to  go  for  a  long  walk." 

They  walked  for  miles  and  miles.  The  mist  sprin- 
kled her  hair  with  dew-drops.  It  looked  quite  white. 
Her  eyes  were  deep  and  brooding  and  you  couldn't 
catch  them. 

"Paula,"  Maurice  said,  "how  remote  you  are." 


VILLEGIATURA  llj 


"Am  I"?"  she  said.  And  it  made  her  more  remote 
than  ever. 

He  walked  desperately,  as  if  each  step  were  an 
obstacle  painfully  overcome.  She  walked  with  a 
swaying  unconscious  rhythm,  as  if  she  did  not  know 
what  she  was  doing. 

She  cut  off  his  perfunctory  attempts  at  conversa- 
tion with  a  monosyllable.  When  they  got  home 
they  were  both  tired. 

They  each  decided  to  have  a  hot  bath  and  rest 
before  dinner. 

She  was  dressed  in  very  severe  perfect  black,  mar- 
vellous lines,  waiting  to  be  sculpted. 

He  told  her  so. 

She  pursed  her  lips. 

They  sat  in  front  of  the  fire  in  the  hall. 

"Tell  me  a  little  more  about  your  husband^"  he 
said. 

"What  can  I  tell  you?  I  know  him  so  well.  You 
see,  I  have  loved  him  and  hated  him — I  have  become 
indifferent  to  him — and  I  appreciate  him.  But  I 
have  had  nothing  from  him  that  a  hundred  other 
people  have  not  had — except,  perhaps,  his  name." 

"Marly?' 

She  looked  at  him  in  amazement. 

"Marly*?"  she  laughed.  "Marly  is  not  even  my 
own  name.  We  are  all  of  us  so  very  monogamous 
when  we  love,  proprietary,  exclusive,  jealous,  what- 


128  BALLOONS 


ever  you  like  to  call  it.  Edmond's  character  was 
like  a  pergola.  You  walked  in  and  out.  There  were 
always  roses  and  jasmine,  clematis  and  wisteria, 
peeps  of  the  garden  and  patches  of  the  sky — but 
never  a  shut  door — ^never  one.  Oh,"  there  was  a 
breaking  passion  in  her  voice — "how  I  longed  for 
four  walls,  for  a  lock  and  key,  for  a  dungeon,  for 
bars.  'Don't  you  know,'  I  would  say  to  him,  'that 
much  trodden  territory  becomes  neutral"?'  and  he 
would  smile  and  say,  'you  are  generous.' " 

Maurice  was  looking  into  the  fire. 

"Poor  little  Paula,"  he  said.  "But  you  were  his 
only  wife." 

"Yes,"  she  said,  "a  law-given  copyright." 

"Paula,"  he  said,  "will  you  do  something  for 
me?" 

"I  wonder.  There  are  surely  no  somethings  where 
we  are  concerned." 

"I  want  you  to  describe  several  dresses  to  me. 
Your  own  perfect  divine  dresses.  I  want  them  for 
my  book." 

"So  I  am  to  be  made  use  of,  am  I?" 

Her  eyes  were  flashing. 

He  was  not  looking  at  her. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "I  am  going  to  steal  some  of  your 
genius." 

She  had  left  him.  He  was  not  surprised.  She 
never  said  "Good-night." 


VILLEGIATURA  129 


The  next  day  she  had  gone — very  early,  leaving 
no  address,  no  letter. 

She  had,  he  heard,  left  his  box  of  flowers  at  the 
village  infirmary.  He  knew  that  that  day  it  was  to 
have  been  full  of  verbena,  sweet  geranium,  sweet 
briar,  thyme,  myrtle,  lavender  and  single  roses.  .  .  . 

Marthe  had  insisted  that  he  should  come  with  her 
to  Lally.  He  was  feeling  foolish  and  fascinated — 
dressing  was  evidently  a  religion  with  the  most  sol- 
emn rites  in  the  world.  The  gravity  and  concentra- 
tion of  every  one  astounded  him — the  firm  vendeuse 
refusing  to  allow  her  cliente  any  freedom  of  choice. 
The  pathetic  cliente  pining  in  vain  for  forbidden 
fruit — the  hopelessly  ugly  and  unrewarding,  who 
alone  were  permitted  to  follow  their  fancies.  Pat- 
terns were  discussed  in  hushed  but  intense  under- 
tones, faint  but  all-important  modifications  were  of- 
fered by  the  vendeuse  to  bridge  the  gulf  between  the 
figures  of  the  mannequins  and  those  of  the  clients. 
The  brave  longing  of  a  squat  pigeon  to  have  the 
model  reproduced  "textuellement"  was  resolutely 
suppressed. 

Marthe  was  discussing  her  vendeuse's  child    .  .  . 

And  then  suddenly  Maurice  saw  Madame  Marly. 
She  was  without  a  hat  and  scattering  her  terrified 
staff  with  her  eye. 

She  came  straight  to  him,  her  voice  was  mocking. 


130  BALLOONS 


"Maintenant,  je  peux  donner  des  renseignements 
a  Monsieur." 

"I  did  not  know,"  he  blurted,  "I  had  no  idea," 
and  then  as  the  ultimate  significance  of  their  meet- 
ing disentangled  itself  from  the  immediate  embar- 
rassment, 

"Thank  God,  I  have  found  you." 

Mile,  de  Marveau  married  the  Comte  de  Cely. 

The  Comtesse  de  Cely  wanted  an  escape  and  be- 
came Madame  Lalli. 

Madame  Lalli  wanted  an  escape  and  became 
Madame  Marly — for  Paula  was  always  Paula. 

And  then  she  met  Maurice  and  her  youth.  Twen- 
ty-five years  of  age  and  experience  and  disappoint- 
ment fell  from  her.  But  to  keep  her  great  illusion 
she  offered  her  big  resistance  .  .  . 

And  then  the  tiny  knife  turned  in  the  tiny  wound. 
The  unconscious  buzzing  machine  touched  the  ex- 
posed nerve — the  silly,  absurd,  irrelevant  name. 

The  lover  in  pursuit  of  the  beloved  became  the 
novelist  examining  the  dressmaker,  seeking  for  in- 
formation.   When  professional  meets  professional. 

This  time  she  capitulated  for  she  ran  away. 

That  night  Maurice  wrote  to  her. 

"Paula,  I  love  you.  I  loved  you  always.  I  loved 
you  invulnerable,  wise,  fortified  beyond  the  wiles 


VILLEGIATURA  I3I 


of  men.  How  much  more  do  I  love  you  now  with 
your  one  weak  spot — so  weak,  so  absurd  that  it  can 
only  be  kissed,  and  laughed  at  and  adored. 

"Paula,  my  own,  the  twenty-five  years  have  never 
existed.  There  is  only  one  immortal  moment — and 
that  is  to  come. 

"Beloved,  best  beloved,  only  beloved,  I  want  you 
so  badly. 

"Maurice. 

"Besides,  you  have  got  to  describe  me  several 
dresses  for  my  new  book." 


XIII 
AULD  LANG  SYNE 
[To  Harold  Nicolson] 

IT  was  delightful  to  be  back  in  England  after  two 
and  a  half  years.  Two  and  a  half  years  of  In- 
dia, of  pomp  and  circumstance  and  being  envied,  of 
heat  and  homesickness  and  loneliness.  How  starved 
she  had  felt — starved  of  little  intellectual  coteries 
with  their  huge  intellectual  sensations — starved  of 
new  books  and  old  pictures  and  music,  of  moss  roses 
and  primroses  and  bluebell  woods,  starved  even  into 
the  selfishness  of  coming  home,  urged  away  by  Rob- 
ert, who  did  not  know  how  to  be  selfish.  Thinking 
of  him  made  her  feel  very  tender  and  very  small. 
His  iron  public  spirit,  his  inevitable  devotion  to 
duty,  unconscious  and  instinctive  and  uncensorious, 
combined  with  a  guilty  sense  that  her  youth  and 
beauty  had  been  uprooted  by  him,  and  put  into  a 
dusty  distant  soil.  He  was  more  convinced  than 
any  one  of  the  importance  of  books  and  music  and 
intellectual  interests  (he  never  read  and  did  not 
know  one  note  from  another)  because  they  were  im- 
portant to  her  and  had  therefore  received  a  conse- 

132 


AULD    LANG    SYNE  133 

cration  they  could  never  have  had  by  merely  being 
important  to  him.  It  was  all  so  very  simple —  What 
she  admired  was  beautiful ;  what  she  laughed  at  was 
funny;  what  she  loved  was  divine —  And  she  be- 
longed to  him — Robert.  It  was  a  miracle  that  found 
him  every  night  on  his  knees  in  humble  gratitude. 
She  had,  he  thought,  been  so  wonderfully  good, 
walking  on  his  red  baize  carpets  as  if  they  were  fields 
of  flowers,  learning  Sanscrit  with  passion  and  pre- 
tending, with  what  seemed  to  him  complete  success, 
and  to  them,  absolute  failure,  that  she  liked  Anglo- 
Indian  women.  When  one  by  one  his  staff  were  in- 
capacitated by  love,  he  never  complained.  It  made 
them  of  course  useless,  but  how  could  they  help 
falling  in  love  with  her?  It  would  have  been  so 
unnatural  if  they  had  not.  And  when  she  told  him 
— and  to  do  her  justice  she  knew  that  she  was  telling 
him  the  truth — that  she  was  not  worthy  to  do  up  his 
shoe  laces — he  would  laugh  and  kiss  her  hand  and 
send  up  a  little  internal  prayer  to  God  to  be  able  to 
do  something  to  deserve  his  wife. 

No  wonder  he  was  always  urging  her  to  go  home 
— ^haunted  as  he  was  by  the  feeling  of  having  put 
her  in  a  prison  and,  no  wonder,  not  having  his  iron 
character,  she  had  finally  succumbed — as  she  so  often 
succumbed  to  his  unselfishness. 

How  she  was  loving  England!  The  wet,  heavy 
air — the  sky  curtained  with  clouds — the  drenched 


134  BALLOONS 


leaves — the  saturated  flowers — the  damp  breathing 
earth — the  distant  lethargic  sun.  She  could  feel  a 
pulse  in  the  sopping  soil  and  her  heart  beat  with  it. 

Finding  her  friends  too  was  such  an  adventure. 
What  struck  her  most  about  them  was  that  they 
seemed  so  stationary.  There  they  were,  just  as  she 
had  left  them,  doing  the  same  things,  thinking  the 
same  things,  saying  the  same  things — fixed  points 
with  their  lives  revolving  round  them,  seeming  to 
have  lost  the  capacity  for  independent  motion. 

She  and  Robert  were  not  like  that.  Thank  God, 
they  were  still  pilgrims.  After  all,  her  life  had  been 
a  big  spacious  thing  in  spite  of  India,  because  of 
India  and,  even  more,  because  of  Robert.  Only  she 
did  not  want  to  think  about  it  now.  Just  to  go  on 
repeating  to  herself:  "I'm  at  home.  I'm  in  Eng- 
land." 

And  she  was  going  to  stay  with  St.  John.  How 
excited  she  would  have  been  four  years  ago.  How 
her  heart  had  beaten  when  she  heard  his  footsteps, 
how  she  had  thrilled  when  he  had  said  "dear"  to 
her.  She  remembered  the  care  he  had  taken  of  her, 
the  beautiful  considerate  devotion  he  had  always 
shown  her  when  she  was  longing  so  passionately  for 
other  things,  trying  with  all  her  might  and  main  to 
make  him  lose  his  head.  How  badly  she  had  be- 
haved. She  could  wonder  now  dispassionately 
whether  he  had  ever  been  in  love  with  her.    On  the 


AULD    LANG    SYNE  135 

whole,  she  thought,  he  never  had.  If  she  had  not 
been  married — it  was  a  silly  "if."  The  most  he  had 
said  was  "you  make  things  very  difficult,"  not  a  very 
satisfactory  avowal  when  you  came  to  think  it  over 
calmly.  But  she  remembered  how  it  had  thrilled  her 
at  the  time — what  a  blank  cheque  of  possibilities  it 
had  seemed.  She  remembered,  too,  the  evening 
when  he  had  talked  seriously  to  her — very  gently, 
very  tenderly,  very  gravely.  She  had  thought  he 
was  going  to  say,  "I  don't  want  to  be  made  un- 
happy," and,  instead,  he  had  said,  "I  don't  want  you 
to  be  unhappy."  That  had  been  a  nasty  one.  How 
she  had  lashed  him  with  her  tongue!  What  inex- 
haustible reserves  of  icy  acid  she  had  brought  for- 
ward. 

She  had  tried  to  hurt  him  as  much  as  ever  she 
could.  How  hurt  had  he  been?  She  wondered.  It 
was  all  such  very  ancient  history.  And  yet  he  had 
gone  on  being  fond  of  her.  Fonder  and  fonder — 
men  were  so  odd. 

So  many  things  had  happened  since  then.  She 
had  been  away  and  he  had  lost  an  uncle  and 
inherited  a  property.  And  now  she  was  going  to 
stay  with  him.  Last  time  they  had  met,  two  years 
ago,  he  had  talked  to  her  as  if  they  had  had  a  boy 
and  girl  affair  thirty  years  before.  She  had  been 
very  much  amused  but  she  had  hidden  it ;  hiding  your 
amusement  was  an  essential  part  of  being  fond  of  St. 


136  BALLOONS 


John — a  rule  of  the  game,  so  to  speak.  That  was 
one  of  the  delightful  things  about  him ;  to  like  him 
at  all  you  had  to  be  really  devoted  to  him  and  when 
you  had  reached  that  stage,  all  of  the  qualities  that 
would  have  been  intolerable  in  other  people  became 
subtly  lovable.  Somehow  they  seemed  to  creep  un- 
der your  wing,  compelling  you  to  give  them  the  pro- 
tection of  your  own  intimate  understanding.  It  was 
impossible  not  to  make  pets  of  St.  John's  defects. 
Ariadne  remembered  the  way  he  had  always  tried  to 
keep  her  out  of  moral  draughts,  how  he  had  hated  to 
see  her  in  a  room  with  any  one  of  a  doubtful  repu- 
tation, how  her  habit  of  taking  off  her  hat  in  motors 
in  towns  got  on  his  nerves. 

"But  if  it  tires  my  head,"  she  would  say,  and  he 
would  explain  very  seriously  what  an  intimate  ges- 
ture it  was. 

Then  as  she  always  rested  before  dirmer,  people 
would  come  to  tea  with  her  in  her  bedroom.  St. 
John  didn't  like  it  at  all.  There  was  to  him  some- 
thing inherently  disreputable  about  the  horizontal. 
If  she  were  too  tired  to  sit  up  in  an  armchair,  she 
was  too  tired  to  see  any  one — except  him,  of  course, 
who  understood  her  (which  was  just  what  he  didn't 
do). 

"But  my  back  does  ache  so  easily.  After  all,  if  I 
were  really  ill  you  wouldn't  mind." 

"That  is  different." 


AULD    LANG    SYNE  I37 

"How  ill  do  I  have  to  be  before  I  can  abdicate 
the  perpendicular  in  the  presence  of  a  young  man'?" 
He  consoled  himself  with  the  thought  that  she  was 
extremely,  exceptionally  innocent.  She  told  him 
that  thousands  of  people  were  extremely,  exception- 
ally innocent.  It  was  a  fact  which  could  never  be 
explained  to  juries.  St.  John  doubted  it.  He  be- 
lieved in  a  vast  number  of  rules  to  which  all  of  the 
people  he  liked  and  most  of  the  people  he  knew  were 
exceptions. 

The  train  drew  up  at  the  platform.  Ariadne  got 
out.  The  footman  explained  to  her  that  his  Lord- 
ship was  so  very  sorry  not  to  be  able  to  come  to  the 
station,  but  he  was  attending  a  cattle  show. 

"Of  course,"  said  Ariadne,  and  she  felt  it. 

She  got  into  the  brougham — it  was  so  characteris- 
tic of  St.  John  not  to  use  a  motor  in  the  country 
— which  had  that  delightful,  almost  forgotten,  smell 
of  broughams,  and  drove  through  an  avenue  of  oaks 
up  to  the  fine  old  Georgian  house,  dignified  and  mel- 
low and  lived  in — a  house  proud  of  its  cellar  and 
its  stables — of  its  linen  and  its  silver — a  house 
where  men  were  men  and  women  were  women — 
where  the  master  hunted  and  sat  on  the  Bench,  and 
the  mistress  embroidered  and  looked  after  the  house- 
hold— each  having  his  separate  functions  and  the 
one  joint  one  of  propagating  the  race. 


138  BALLOONS 


In  the  hall,  St.  John's  housekeeper,  in  a  black  taf- 
fetas apron,  welcomed  her. 

"His  Lordship  would  be  most  distressed  not  to 
have  been  there  when  her  ladyship  arrived,  but  the 
cattle  show " 

"Of  course,"  said  Ariadne,  and  hinted  at  a  quite 
special  awareness  of  the  importance  of  Cattle  Shows. 

Her  bedroom  was  immense — there  were  lavender 
bags  in  all  the  drawers,  and  flowers  on  the  dressing 
table,  the  fire  was  lit  and  there  was  boiling  water 
in  the  shiny  pale  brass  can.  Her  maid,  the  house- 
keeper explained,  was  sleeping  in  the  dressing  room. 
On  the  table  by  her  bed  was  a  glass  box  of  biscuits, 
"The  Wrong  Box,"  "Omar  Kha3ry^am"  and  Lucas 
Malet's  last  novel. 

Ariadne  was  smiling  with  happiness.  Talk  about 
the  joys  of  the  unexpected,  can  they  compare  with 
the  joys  of  the  expected,  of  finding  everything  de- 
lightfully and  completely  what  you  knew  it  was  go- 
ing to  be*?    There  was  a  tap  at  the  door. 

"Come  in." 

"It's  I."    (St.  John  never  said  "It's  me.") 

She  threw  open  the  door. 

"Do  come  in,"  she  said,  and  then,  with  a  little 
stab  of  extra  pleasure,  she  wondered  if  he  would  be 
shocked  by  her  flimsy  pink  dressing  gown  and  her 
bare  feet. 


AULD    LANG    SYNE  I39 

"St.  John,"  she  put  out  both  her  hands.  "I  am 
happy  to  be  here." 

He  took  them  and  held  them  quite  tight,  then  he 
kissed  them. 

"Little  Ariadne,"  he  said. 

It  was,  she  supposed,  a  way  of  getting  over  the 
dressing  gown. 

"You  look  younger  than  ever,"  he  said. 

"It's  my  hair  being  down,"  she  murmured. 

He  asked  her  if  she  had  had  a  good  journey,  and 
whether  the  housekeeper  had  seen  that  she  had  every- 
thing she  wanted. 

She  asked  him  if  the  cattle  show  had  been  a  suc- 
cess. 

He  said  he  really  must  dress  for  dinner,  and  so 
must  she. 

"Ariadne,"  he  put  his  hand  on  her  arm,  "it's  good 
to  have  you  here." 

There  was  an  emotion  welling  up  in  his  voice  that 
surprised  her.  He  turned  his  back  and  left  the 
room  rather  hurriedly.  She  realised  that  he  had 
almost  kissed  her.  Would  he  have  said,  "I'm  sorry, 
but  you  looked  such  a  baby,"  or,  "Forgive  me,  it  was 
seeing  you  again  after  so  long,"  or,  "Ariadne,  can 
you  forgive  me?    I  lost  my  head." 

She  plumped  for  the  baby,  and  wondered  if  the 
visit  could  conceivably  be  going  to  be  a  slight  strain. 
In  old  days  there  had  always  been  a  certain  tense- 


140  BALLOONS 


ness  about  their  relationship,  made  worse  by  her 
attempts  to  topple  over  his  gentlemanliness.  She 
had  felt  that  if  her  wish  could  have  been  gratified 
just  once,  she  would  have  been  released  from  it  and 
never  have  wanted  to  repeat  the  experiment.  Also 
a  little  of  the  responsibility  would  have  been  his — 
thus  obliterating  the  irritating  daily  spectacle  of  his 
untarnished  blamelessness. 

Of  course  he  had  never  been  in  love  with  her, 
She  had  always  been  buoyed  up  by  little  things  she 
wouldn't  even  have  noticed  in  some  one  she  hadn't 
cared  about.  If  there  were  acute  disquieting  mo- 
ments when  the  troublante  quality  of  her  loveliness 
tossed  him  about  unmercifully — weren't  they  mo- 
ments that  any  stranger  might  go  through  sitting 
next  to  her  at  dinner"?  No — the  truth  always  had 
been  that  he  was  really  fond  of  her. 

"I'm  glad  now,"  she  smiled  to  herself,  "how 
lucky  that  we  can't  always  sculpt  our  own  rela- 
tionships." 

She  went  down  to  dinner — in  the  huge  hall  full  of 
armchairs  and  cushions  and  antlers  and  comfort  St. 
John  stood  with  his  back  to  the  fire  smoking  a  cig- 
arette which  he  threw  into  the  grate  when  he  saw 
her  (St.  John  invariably  threw  away  his  cigarette 
when  you  came  into  the  room  and  then  asked  your 
permission  to  light  a  new  one.     In  her  mind's  eye 


AULD    LANG    SYNE  I4I 

Ariadne  always  saw  him  opening  the  door  for  his 
wife  after  a  violent  scene  with  her). 

"My  dear,"  she  said,  "what  a  divine  house." 

"The  wing  you  are  sleeping  in  was  built  by  the 
fifth  Lord  .  .  . 

"The  staircase  was  designed  by  .  .  . 

"The  mantelpieces  in  the  drawing  room  .  .  . 

"After  dinner  I  will  show  you  .  .  ." 

Dinner  was  announced. 

She  tucked  her  hand  under  his  arm. 

"Are  you  going  to  take  me  in  to  dinner,  St. 
John?' 

"Of  course,"  he  smiled  at  her. 

The  diniiig  room  was  big  enough  to  reduce  the 
immense  pieces  of  Georgian  silver — beautiful  they 
were — to  reasonable  proportions. 

St.  John  said  there  were  some  very  fine  pieces  of 
Queen  Anne  which  he  would  show  her. 

"There  was,"  she  murmured,  "nothing  like  Queen 
Anne." 

The  attentiveness  of  the  footman  and  even  of  the 
butler  did  not  seem  to  her  to  be  entirely  confined  to 
their  wants. 

St.  John  asked  her  questions  about  India,  which 
she  answered  as  she  answered  travelling  Europeans 
— correctly,  concisely,  and  without  any  frills  of  vo- 
cabulary. It  was  quite  possible,  she  reflected,  that 
St.  John  wanted  to  know  the  answers  to  his  ques- 


142  BALLOONS 


tions.  That  was  the  worst  of  being  abroad  so  much, 
you  were  always  either  trying  to  tell  things  it  bored 
people  to  hear,  or  else  they  were  determined  to  hear 
things  that  it  bored  you  to  tell.  Her  mind  wandered 
to  the  curious  tide-like  quality  of  interest,  the  way 
it  advanced  and  retreated  in  a  conversation. 

St.  John  was  explaining  what  a  quiet  life  he  had 
led.  Perhaps,  to  her,  it  would  have  even  seemed 
dull.  (This  to  him  was  rhetorical  paradox,  and  to 
her  an  obvious  truth.)  She  did  not  know,  he  said, 
what  it  meant  to  feel  that  the  land  belonged  to  you 
— to  see  your  own  flowers  growing,  your  own  calves 
being  born — to  feel  yourself  surrounded  by  your  own 
people,  for  whose  happiness  and  welfare  you  were  re- 
sponsible. 

Ariadne  said  that  inheritance  was  a  sacred  trust 
(it  was  wonderful  how  easy  she  found  it  to  talk  like 
St.  John). 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "that  is  just  it — a  sacred  trust. 
Why,  I  hardly  ever  go  up  to  London  now,  and  when 
I  do,  I  feel  quite  homesick  till  I  get  here  again." 

They  got  up  from  dinner. 

"Shall  we  go  and  sit  in  the  library*?"  he  said. 

They  sat  one  on  either  side  of  the  fire.  She  felt 
like  an  ancestress  or  a  family  portrait.  The  rosy 
haze  of  her  tea-gown  looked  strange  and  alien  flut- 
tering in  the  huge  leather  armchair. 

"What  a  wisp  you  look,"  St.  John  said.    She  re- 


AULD    LANG    SYNE  I43 

membered  how  satisfactory  her  tininess  had  always 
been  to  him.  "I  think  I  could  blow  you  away  with 
a  puff  of  smoke." 

"I  am  a  limpet  really,"  she  laughed,  "think  how 
I  have  stuck  to  your  life." 

"Thank  God,"  he  affirmed  fervently. 

"Are  you  still  a  great  flirt,  St.  John*?" 

He  looked  at  her  in  amazement. 

"You  have  surely  not  forgotten  the  way  you 
played  fast  and  loose  with  me^" 

"Ariadne,"  he  was  using  the  firm  voice  she  knew 
so  well,  "you  mustn't  talk  like  that." 

"But  you  did.    Don't  you  remember  that  dinner 

you  gave  when  we  went  to  the  L 's  ball  and  you 

never  danced  with  me  till  seventeen  minutes  past 
one?" 

"My  dear,  I  was  saving  you  up.  The  joy  after 
all  the  duties." 

"You  never  told  me  so." 

"There  were  a  lot  of  things  I  never  told  you." 

"I  tried  so  hard  to  make  you.'* 

"It  was  so  hard  not  to." 

"St.  John,"  she  said,  "the  things  you  didn't  tell 
me,  were  they  true*?" 

"Yes,  they  were  true." 

He  had  got  up  and  knelt  by  her  chair. 

She  put  her  hand  on  his  head. 

"St.  John,"  she  said.     Should  she  tell  him  that 


144  BALLOONS 


they  were  not  true*?  That  he  was  building  up  a 
retrospective  passion  which  had  never  existed"?  That 
what  he  supposed  to  have  been  renunciation  and 
self-control  and  chivalry  had  in  reality  been  a  rather 
tactfully  steered  uninflammable  affection  *?  Why  his 
voice  now  was  far  more  broken  up  and  moved  than 
she  had  ever  heard  it  before.  Of  course  he  had  not 
been  in  love  with  her.  She  had  never  realised  it  as 
clearly  as  to-night.  For  a  mom'ent  he  put  his  face  in 
her  lap,  then  he  kissed  her  hands — reverently,  in 
memory  of  his  great  sacrifice. 

"May  I  smoke  a  cigarette*?"  he  asked. 

"Please  do." 

He  went  back  to  his  chair. 

She  was,  he  said,  a  wonderful  friend. 

So,  she  said,  was  he. 

They  talked  about  his  family  and  her  family — a 
little  about  their  mutual  friends  and  a  lot  about 
friends  of  his  that  she  had  never  seen. 

They  talked  about  furniture  and  gardens. 

There  were,  he  said,  a  lot  of  subjects  on  which 
he  wanted  her  advice. 

It  was  all  very  domestic,  their  two  armchairs  and 
the  fire — the  dying  fire.  He  must,  she  supposed,  be 
imagining  that  they  were  married,  seeing  her  at  the 
head  of  the  table,  in  the  family  pew.  She  won- 
dered if  he  would  have  let  her  re-set  the  family  jew- 
els.   Perhaps  his  mind  had  reached  the  nursery.  He 


AULD    LANG    SYNE  I45 

was  dreaming  of  children,  his  children,  her  children, 
their  children. 

Dear  St.  John.  She  looked  at  him  tenderly.  She 
longed  to  explain  what  an  unsuitable  wife  she  would 
have  made  him. 

"What  are  you  thinking  about*?"  her  voice  was 
very  gentle. 

"I  was  thinking  of  the  cattle  I  bought  to-day,  and 
wondering  what  sort  of  fencing  I  should  put  up  at 
the  bottom  of  the  drive.  Ariadne,  you  remember 
how  gregarious  I  used  to  be;  well,  you  can't  think 
how  perfectly  happy  I  am  living  here  alone." 

Smiles  were  popping  out  of  her  face  shamelessly. 
No  sooner  had  she  kept  one  out  of  her  eyes  than  it 
reappeared  on  her  lips. 

"Dear  St.  John,"  she  said,  "I  do  love  you." 

He  looked,  she  thought,  a  little  alarmed. 

"Not  like  that,  that  is  all  over." 

"Quite  over?" 

"Quite — are  you  glad?" 

"If  it  makes  you  happier,"  and  then,  "No,  Fm 
damned  if  I'm  glad." 

"Thank  you,  St.  John,'*  she  was  laughing  a  little. 

He  looked  puzzled,  even  rather  disappointed- 
She  had  broken  the  rules  and  laughed. 

"How  lucky  you  didn't  say  that  to  me  four  years 
ago." 

"Don't,"  he  said  sharply. 


146  BALLOONS 


"I'm  sorry." 

He  was  lighting  her  candle. 

"To-morrow,"  he  said,  "you  will  choose  the  colour 
of  the  garden  gates  and  advise  me  about  the  fenc- 
mg. 

"That  will  be  fun." 

She  shivered. 

"Are  you  cold?" 

"One  is  always  cold  after  India." 

He  took  her  to  the  door  of  her  bedroom. 

"Good-night — God  bless  you,"  he  said. 

She  put  her  two  hands  on  his  shoulders  and,  bend- 
ing forward,  she  kissed  him  lightly.  It  was  a  cruel 
way  of  showing  him  that  she  didn't  care  any  more. 

"What  a  revengeful  woman  I  am,  punishing  him 
after  all  these  years,"  she  thought. 

But  he  didn't  see  it  like  that. 

"I  think  I  deserve  her  trust,"  he  said  to  himself, 
and  then  his  thoughts,  let  out  to  graze,  returned  to 
the  subject  of  fences. 

"Robert,"  wrote  Ariadne,  "I  am  homesick  for 
India." 


XIV 
TWO  TAXI  DRIVES 

[To  Paul  Morand] 

i:     SUNSHINE 

MARGARET,  my  dear,  how  delightful." 
"Is  it?" 

"But  of  course." 

"I  always  wonder,"  she  murmured,  "about  acci- 
dental and  sudden  meetings.  They  are  a  sort  of  nerv- 
ous shock  and  you  always  feel  that  you  are  looking 
for  something  that  you've  mislaid  and  that  you  don't 
seem  able  to  find  again  imtil  you've  parted." 

"How  depressing  you  are.  Looking  for  mislaid 
intimacy,  do  you  mean*?" 

"I  suppose  so." 

"When  I  saw  you  I  simply  felt — Margaret,  thank 
God!" 

"Matthew,  you  old  humbug.'* 

"And  for  you  who  specialise  in  intimacy  and  the 
unexpected,  it  is  simply  disgraceful." 

"But  I  don't." 

"You  used  to." 

"Yes." 

147 


148  BALLOONS 


"Are  you  a  reformed  character*?" 

"A  reformed  experimentalist." 

"I  don't  believe  it." 

"Matthew,  after  all  I  am  glad  to  see  you." 

"Then  let  us  take  a  taxi  and  drive  round  the 
Bois." 

"Very  well." 

"You're  not  reformed  at  all.  If  you  were,  you 
would  say,  'I've  got  to  try  on,'  or,  'there  are  so 
many  things  I  must  do  before  lunch,'  or  'I  am  only 
in  Paris  for  such  a  short  time.' " 

"They're  all  true." 

"Of  course — that  sort  of  thing  is  always  true. 
The  point  is,  is  it  relevant*?" 

"Talking  of  specialists.  Do  you  still  specialise  in 
the  irrelevant*?" 

"I  have  never  understood  what  that  word  meant 
when  applied  to  my  activities.  I  have  still  kept  my 
sense  of  proportion,  if  that  is  what  you  are  driving 
at?" 

"And  Virginia*?" 

"Is  still  Virginia." 

"And  you  love  her*?'* 

"Very  often." 

"Not  all  the  time?" 

"Certainly  not.  How  then  should  I  have  my  op- 
portunities of  discovering  that  I  loved  her?" 

"Does  she  like  your  method?" 


TWO    TAXI    DRIVES  I49 

"I  wonder.    Sometimes  it  gets  on  her  nerves." 

"Poor  Virginia." 

"It  is  ridiculous  to  pity  Virginia.  Every  one 
adores  her  and  she  meddles  about  in  people's  lives 
to  her  heart's  content." 

"I  always  pity  women  who  care  for  charming 
men." 

"Why — because  charming  men  are  fickle?** 

"No,  because  they  are  vulnerable." 

"Nonsense." 

"Charm  is  the  dragon's  blood." 

"But  the  leaf  always  falls  somewhere." 

"And  the  weak  spot  is  vanity — which  is  no  use  to 
one  at  all." 

"By  the  way,  how  is  Michael,  talking  of  charming 
men.     Or,  were  we  talking  about  them*?" 

"I  suppose  so." 

"Margaret,  I  don't  like  Michael." 

"Why  not?" 

"He  is  too  complete.*' 

"Do  you  usually  tell  women  that  you  don't  like 
their  husbands'?" 

"No,  they  usually  tell  it  to  me." 

"Is  that  what  you  suggest  that  I  am  doing?" 

"Margaret,  please.  You  know  I  didn't  mean  that. 
It  was  just  an  idiotic  jeu  de  mots." 

"Matthew,  be  careful ;  if  you  are  serious  you  will 
turn  my  head." 


150  BALLOONS 


"I  would  love  to  turn  your  head." 

"Why  is  it  that  you  always  make  me  indiscreet*?" 

"I  suppose  that  I  inspire  people  with  the  happy 
illusion  that  I  am  not  going  to  take  what  they  say 
seriously." 

"I  suppose  that  is  it." 

"By  the  way,  what  was  India  like?" 

"Do  you  want  to  know?" 

"Of  course  not." 

"I  stayed  with  Ariadne." 

"Is  she  happy?" 

"Radiant." 

"Loving  pomp?" 

"Loving  Robert." 

"Dear  me." 

"Robert  is  the  most  wonderful  man  in  the  world." 

"Well,  he  wanted  to  marry  you;  why  didn't  you 
marry  him?" 

"I  thought  his  pedestal  such  a  precarious  foothold 
in  life." 

"If  Ariadne  can  balance  on  it  for  a  moment,  it 
must  be  pretty  firm." 

"It  is  a  lovely  pedestal.  You  can  see  for  miles 
from  it,  and  it  is  as  comfortable  as  an  armchair." 

"Ariadne  always  had  a  rare  eye  for  a  cushion." 

"Ariadne  is  a  perfect  wife." 

"Margaret,  it  is  absolutely  essential  that  I  should 
see  you  once  every  twenty-four  hours  for  the  rest 


TWO    TAXI    DRIVES  I5I 

of  my  life.  You  will,  therefore,  not  think  me  too 
matter-of-fact  if  I  ask  you  your  immediate  plans  ^" 

"I  am  staying  here  three  more  days." 

"Damn — sixteen  hours  gone  already,  I  am  off  to 
Deauville." 

"Then  I  am  going  back  to  London  where  it  will 
all  begin  again." 

"I  shall  be  there." 

"How  grand  it  soimds  to  be  a  melodrama." 

"Margaret,  do  you  know  that  I  love  you  a  great 
deal?' 

"I  know  that  you  are  a  great  flirt." 

"Of  course.  That  makes  my  real  love  so  very 
exceptional  and  precious." 

"Does  Virginia  know  that"?" 

"Virginia  almost  understands  everything,  but  of 
course  she  can't  afford  to  admit  it,  or  one  would 
behave  too  impossibly." 

"Matthew,  may  I  tell  you  something  very  seri- 
ous?" 

"Yes,  if  you  don't  expect  me  to  profit  by  it." 

"I  used  to  understand  almost  everything,  and  I 
went  on  stretching  and  stretching  till  it  broke,  and 
now  I  understand  nothing." 

"Perhaps  you  are  right,"  he  twinkled  at  her,  "per- 
haps I  had  better  not  marry  Virginia." 

"Are  you  trying  to  make  me  unhappy?" 


152  BALLOONS 


"Margaret,  dearest,  I  might  even  be  serious  if  I 
thought  that  it  would  make  you  happy." 

"Good  heavens,  it's  one,  and  I  am  lunching  at 
one. 

"Margaret,  promise  never  to  mislay  our  intimacy 
again." 

"I  promise." 

That  evening  there  was  a  knock  at  the  door. 

"Monsieur  a  fait  dire  que  c'etait  un  bouquet  pour 
Madame." 

An  immense  bunch  of  balloons  followed  him  into 
the  room. 

"For  Margaret  who — in  spite  of  everything,  be- 
cause of  everything — understands  everything." 

"Matthew,"  she  wrote,  "how  young  you  make 
me. 

And  then  she  murmured  to  herself: 

"Poor  Virginia!" 

II :     LAMPS 

"I  love  you  so."  The  wheels  of  the  taxi  were  the 
counterpoint  to  his  voice. 

"What  is  the  good  of  my  turning  away  when 
every  bit  of  him  bites  into  my  consciousness*?"  she 
thought. 

The  road  stretched  ahead  of  them  like  cire  satin 
with  a  piping  of  lights.  She  had  changed  her  posi- 
tion a  little,  restless  under  the  constraint  of  his 


TWO    TAXI    DRIVES  153 

eyes.  A  lamp  lit  her  up  for  him,  her  face  white  and 
drawn,  her  eyelids  pulled  over  her  eyes  like  a  heavy 
curtain. 

*'One  feels  that  one  could  skate  down  the  street,'* 
she  murmured,  "it  looks  like  stuff  worn  thin  with 
time  and  use — the  shabby  shiny  surface  of  the 
night." 

On  and  on  they  went. 

"We  can't  get  anywhere,"  he  said. 

A  lamp  lit  up  her  face. 

It  looked  so  weary  and  impotent  as  if  she  had 
abdicated  the  uneven  struggle  with  circumstances. 

On  they  raced,  down  the  slippery  ribbon  of  road. 

There  was  a  bump  and  she  fell  towards  him.  He 
stretched  out  his  arm  and  held  her  firm  and  secure. 
He  wanted  her  to  feel  that  it  was  a  rampart  and 
not  an  insidious  outpost  of  passion  quick  to  take 
advantage. 

"Let  me  kiss  you  once,  for  God's  sake,"  his  voice 
was  harsh. 

She  turned  her  face  towards  him.  The  passing 
lamp  showed  her  resigned,  pitying,  tender. 

"Don't  look  like  that,"  he  said — sharp  with  the 
things  he  had  wanted. 

*Tm  sorry,"  her  voice  was  velvety  and  comfort- 
ing. 
'    Yet  another  lamp,  there  was  a  faint  smile  on  her 


154  BALLOONS 


lips — breathed  as  it  were  from  him.  He  huddled 
into  his  corner,  hurt  by  her  compassion. 

"I  hate  to  see  the  moon,"  she  said,  "cynical  and 
prying — an  eavesdropper  of  a  moon." 

Again  a  light  gave  him  a  fleeting  vision  of  her — 
photographed  on  to  his  soul. 

Her  deep  dark  eyes,  heavy  with  distress,  the 
comers  of  her  mouth  repudiating  the  misery  of  the 
moment.    She  put  her  hand  on  his  ami. 

"Don't,"  she  said,  "there  is  in  life  such  an  in- 
coherent mass  of  interwoven  strands.  And  perhaps 
something  comes  and  tears  them  all  to  bits." 

Her  voice  was  chanting — as  if  she  were  singing 
him  a  lullaby — then  it  became  light  again. 

"Wait  till  the  next  lamp,"  she  said.  "And  you 
will  see  in  my  eyes  the  old  laughter  that  you  used 
to  love." 

They  turned  down  a  side  street  and  there  were  no 
more  lights. 

Abruptly  the  taxi  stopped. 

She  got  out.  Her  pale  gold  coat  was  a  continua- 
tion of  the  moon. 

She  turned  her  brooding  eyes  away  from  him. 

"Thank  you  for  taking  me  home,"  she  said;  her 
voice  had  broken.  She  looked  back — a  smile  turned 
on  to  her  lips. 

He  heard  her  latch  key.  The  door  opened  and 
shut. 


XV 

A  TOUCH  OF  SPRING 
ITo  W.  Y.  Turner] 

THE  sun  was  streaming  through  the  curtains  sil* 
houetting  a  strange  bloated  pattern  on  the 
chintz,  breaking  through  an  opening  and  cutting  a 
deep  yellow  slit  in  the  carpet.  She  lay  in  bed  sub- 
consciously awake,  subconsciously  asleep,  her 
thoughts  drifting  into  dreams,  her  limbs  merging 
into  one  another.  "This  is  happiness,"  she  mur- 
mured to  herself,  and  feeling  consciousness  invade 
her,  she  clutched  at  the  perfect  moment,  and  it  was 
gone. 

Smiling  at  her  defeat  she  stretched  herself  lux- 
uriously like  a  cat  and  poked  her  toes  out  into  a 
cool  expanse  of  sheet. 

"It  is  nice,"  she  thought,  "to  have  the  whole  bed 
to  myself." 

She  curled  herself  up  and  lay  for  a  few  moments 
watching  the  sun  catching  little  patches  of  air  and 
turning  them  into  rainbow  dust.  Then  she  rang. 
Her  maid  let  in  such  a  flood  of  light  that  she  was 
forced  to  shade  her  eyes.     An  unabashed  cuckoo 

155 


156  BALLOONS 


broke  into  the  chorus  of  birds,  glorying  in  being  a 
solo  part  and  despising  them  for  mixing  and  inter- 
twining their  notes. 

She  got  out  of  bed  and  her  bare  feet  sank  into  the 
warm  furry  rug;  without  putting  on  her  slippers  she 
walked  across  the  room,  stepping  like  a  child  into 
the  puddles  of  sunshine  on  the  carpet.  Leaning  out 
of  the  window  the  air  pierced  through  her  transpar- 
ent nightgown — a  tingling  quality  underlying  a 
faint  veil  of  warmth.  Everywhere  mist  and  dew 
lay  on  the  countryside  like  the  bloom  on  a  grape. 
The  gardener's  boy  walking  across  the  lawn  had 
left  his  footprints  stamped  in  emerald  on  the  grass. 

Smiling  intimately  to  herself  she  got  into  her  bath, 
wondering  vaguely  at  the  miracle  of  water,  enjoying 
impersonally  the  cool  whiteness  of  her  body,  doing 
tricks  of  perspective  with  her  arms  and  legs. 

She  dressed  slowly  with  indolent  rhythmical 
movements,  indifferently  aware  of  her  effortless  in- 
evitable perfection. 

Even  more  slowly  she  walked  down  the  staircase 
out  through  the  open  window  on  to  the  grey  terrace. 
Somehow  she  felt  that  she  was  violating  the  morn- 
ing, forcing  the  human  on  to  the  divine.  Sipping  the 
day  she  walked  towards  the  almonds  with  their  pink 
blush  of  blossom  bursting  through  the  brown;  turn- 
ing round  her  head  she  saw  the  double  cherry,  its 
branches  nearly  breaking  under  their  load  of  snow. 


A    TOUCH    OF    SPRING  I57 

And  at  the  roots  of  every  tree  uninvited  primroses 
and  violets  were  crowding  out  the  earth. 

She  followed  the  winding  terraces  towards  the 
gleaming  river,  past  fluttering  daffodils  and  wan- 
dering narcissi,  over  riotous  anemones  and  bright 
sturdy  scyllse,  shaking  showers  of  diamonds  off  the 
grasses  as  she  went. 

The  river  lay  like  a  long  satin  streamer,  a  curling 
ribbon  dropped  on  the  meadows.  And  everywhere, 
hidden  and  vibrating,  was  an  urgency  of  life :  buds 
bursting  into  blossom,  birds  bursting  into  flight. 

Gradually  the  veil  was  lifting  from  the  morning, 
the  sun  was  rubbing  the  bloom  off  it  as  a  child  rubs 
sleep  from  his  eyes. 

She  retraced  her  steps,  putting  down  her  feet  with 
the  delicate  fastidiousness  of  a  cat  in  order  not  to 
tread  on  a  flower.  "I'm  alone  with  you,"  she  said 
shyly  and  ecstatically  to  the  day.  Never  before 
had  she  had  the  Spring  to  herself.  Always  there  had 
been  the  children  (now  on  a  visit)  dragging  plans 
and  occupations,  games,  picnics,  and  bicycles  across 
the  pure  joy  of  living,  or  her  husband  like  a  violin 
very  close  to  her  ear  tearing  her  nerves  to  shreds  with 
poignant  urgent  beauty. 

Looking  dispassionately  at  her  life,  it  seemed  to 
her  a  slum  of  human  relationships,  airless,  over- 
crowded, a  dusty  arena  where  psychological  acrobats 
perform  by  artificial  light.    And  always  that  drag- 


158  BALLOONS 


ging  of  the  general  down  to  the  particular,  that  cir- 
cumscribing of  everything  by  the  personal,  every 
rose  a  token,  the  moon  something  to  kiss  by,  flowers 
prostituted  into  bouquets.  She  thought  how  happy 
she  was  this  morning,  feeling  a  little  tiny  speck  of 
the  miracle  of  life  instead  of  trying  to  catch  it  like 
a  wasp  under  the  wine  glass  of  some  human  desire. 

This  not  being  a  wife,  or  a  mother,  or  a  friend, 
or  a  beloved,  or  even  herself,  but  a  tiny  part  of 
the  universal,  this  surely  was  happiness.  To  be  at 
one  with  the  morning,  to  belong  to  this  frontierless 
world  of  nature,  to  be  coaxed  into  flower  by  the 
sun,  to  be  a  strand  in  some  unknown  design,  how 
much  better  than  the  weary  steering  of  your  life 
between  the  Scylla  of  your  ardent  futile  longings 
and  the  Charybdis  of  some  senseless  malignant 
providence. 

She  took  her  lunch  into  the  wood.  The  blue- 
bells were  still  in  bud  and  hadn't  yet  swept  every- 
thing before  them  in  a  headlong  rush  of  waves 
that  never  broke.  She  sat  in  an  open  space  on  a 
patch  of  velvety  moss,  surrounded  by  tree  trunks 
and  waving  windflowers  and  peeping  primroses 
and  violets,  all  diffident  forerunners  of  Spring, 
shyly  enjoying  the  sun  before  being  submerged  in 
that  all-conquering  flood  of  blue. 

She  caressed  the  groimd  with  her  hand  and 
watched  little  gusts  of  wind  play  hide  and  seek  with 


A    TOUCH    OF    SPRING  1^9 

the  sun.  "I  don't  believe  I've  ever  been  alone  be- 
fore," she  thought,  and  she  stretched  out  her  arms 
into  the  air,  initiating  them  into  freedom. 

Gradually  the  sun  began  to  sink,  throwing  a  riot- 
ous tangle  of  crimson  and  gold  streamers  to  salute 
the  earth.  "They  are  hauling  down  the  flag  of  my 
perfect  day,"  she  thought  with  a  stab  of  poignant 
sorrow. 

The  sky  became  the  colour  of  a  primrose  stalk  and 
as  transparent  as  green  glass.  Before  touching  the 
horizon  it  dissolved  into  violet  powder.  The  colour 
was  being  blotted  out  of  everything;  one  after  an- 
other the  flowers  went  out  like  lights;  only  the  white 
cherry  seemed  phosphorescent  in  the  gathering  dark- 
ness. A  thick  white  mist  was  relentlessly  invading 
everything,  climbing  higher  and  higher,  enveloping 
her  in  its  cold,  wet  clutches. 

Bewildered  and  miserable,  she  struggled  forward 
through  the  extinguished  beauty  of  the  world.  A 
thin  white  sickle  of  a  moon  painted  on  the  sky 
looked  cynically  down  at  her.  Stumbling,  shivering, 
she  hurried  blindly  along. 

The  big  stone  hall  was  flickering  in  the  blaze  of 
an  immense  fire,  peopled  with  strange,  unreal,  clus- 
tering shadows.  In  front  of  it  stood  a  man  in  a  fur 
coat.  He  turned  towards  her  with  outstretched 
arms. 

"My  darling,  what  have  you  been  domg  out  with- 


l6o  BALLOONS 


out  a  coat*?  Look  at  your  hair  all  white  with  mist 
and  your  sopping  dress.  I  can't  trust  you  to  look 
after  yourself  for  one  day,  can  I?" 

She  looked  at  him  as  if  he  were  a  ghost.  A  look 
of  blankness  and  horror. 

He  gathered  her  up  and  carried  her  to  her  bed- 
room. Putting  her  in  a  chair  beside  the  fire  he  knelt 
down  and  pulled  off  her  shoes  and  stockings. 

She  felt  as  if  something  were  breaking  inside  her. 
Cold  unrelieving  tears  were  running  down  her  face. 

He  was  kissing  her  hands  and  her  feet,  murmuring 
little  caresses,  enveloping  her  in  the  glow  of  his  love. 
And  still  she  couldn't  feel  any  warmer. 

Putting  his  arms  tight  round  her  he  held  her  close 
to  him,  her  cold  wet  face  nestling  in  his  neck. 

"I  shall  never  leave  you  alone  again,"  he  whis- 
pered passionately,  but  to  his  horror  he  felt  her  stif- 
fen and  fall  to  the  ground  with  a  thud. 

At  that  moment  her  old  maid  came  in.  "Poor  wee 
thing,"  she  said,  "don't  you  be  worrying  and  fretting 
yourself.    It's  just  a  touch  of  the  Spring." 


XVI 
FIDO  AND  PONTO 

FIDO  was  a  Dalmatian — of  the  race  described 
by  some  as  blotting  paper  and  by  others  as 
plum  pudding  dogs.  Every  line  of  his  body  had 
been  formed  by  hundreds  of  years  of  tradition.  You 
can  find  his  ancestors  in  tapestries  and  petit  point 
in  Italian  primitives  and  Flemish  family  groups, 
nestling  in  voluminous  satin  petticoats,  or  running 
at  the  heels  of  skating  children — moving  in  sedate 
indifference  beside  the  cortege  of  a  pope,  or  barking 
in  gay  derision  at  the  tidy  Dutch  snow.  Not  "a 
dog"  or  "the  dog"  but  "dog"  unspecified  and  abso- 
lute. True,  till  1700  it  was  largely  a  matter  of  sil- 
houette, the  lissom  outline  was  there,  but  with  a 
certain  variety  of  colouring.  Then  the  18th  cen- 
tury stepped  in  and  made  spots  de  rigueur — Dalma- 
tians invaded  new  territory.  They  conquered  the 
kingdom  of  china  and  occupied  a  commanding  posi- 
tion in  coaching  prints.  An  unaccompanied  post, 
chaise,  deplorable  in  life,  because  unknown  in  art, 
and  the  expression  "carriage  dog"  came  into  use 
for  the  first  time. 

The  18th  and  19th  centuries  were  the  golden  age 
161 


l62  BALLOONS 


of  Dalmatian  rule,  and  when  their  dynasty  was 
finally  overthrown,  it  was  not  by  a  new  upstart  race 
of  dogs,  but  by  a  new  upstart  production  of  that 
blind  and  ugly  mother  of  strong  and  hideous  chil- 
dren— progress.    Motors  were  invented. 

If  machinery  had  a  conscience,  what  a  procession 
of  ghosts  would  it  not  be  haunted  by — ghosts  of 
white  fingers  and  humming  spinning  wheels,  ghosts 
of  parasols — stiff  pagodas  of  taffetas  or  rippling 
fountains  of  lace — ghosts  of  victorias  and  barouches 
and  tandems — ghosts  of  spotted  streaks  of  lightning 
bounding  forward  with  the  grace  of  cats  and  the 
speed  of  Derby  winners,  capering  with  fastidious 
frivolity  between  yellow  wheels. 

Dalmatians,  console  yourselves,  you  are  in  good 
company.  Beside  you  walks  the  ghost  of  civilisa- 
tion herself — surrounded  by  the  phantom  forms  of 
courtesy  and  leisure  and  all  the  lost  company  of  the 
divine  superfluous. 

Cause  and  effect,  demand  and  supply,  where  does 
the  vicious  circle  begin  and  end*?  Certain  it  is  that 
when  motors  began  to  drench  the  countryside  in 
dust  and  suppress  reflexion  by  providing  our  after- 
thoughts with  transport,  Dalmatians  disappeared. 
Silently,  imperceptibly,  putting  down  their  paws 
with  all  the  old  fastidious  grace,  they  crept  out  of 
a  world  that  had  betrayed  aristocracy.  Only  Fido 
remained — to  die  of  a  broken  heart. 


FIDO    AND    PONTO  163 

When  I  first  saw  him,  he  was  a  puppy — a  thin 
lanky  puppy,  waiting  to  be  filled  in  by  life,  a  mere 
sketch  of  the  masterpiece  he  was  to  become.  Even 
in  those  days  he  had  heavy  black  charmeuse  ears, 
marvellous  thick  rich  satin  they  were,  and  tiny  dark 
rims  to  his  eyes — a  setting  of  pencilled  shadow. 
How  am  I  to  describe  his  spots'?  The  wonderful 
distribution  of  black  and  white,  the  ruffle  at  the  side 
of  his  arched  neck  made  by  the  meeting  of  two  com- 
petitive rhythms  of  hairs,  the  looseness  of  his  skin, 
his  long  lithe  legs  that  would  tie  themselves  into  a 
tangled  heap  of  grace  when  he  lay  down. 

To  see  him  move  was  to  see  motion  made  con- 
crete— to  see  him  run  was  to  realise  that  even  Pav- 
lova had  never  quite  overcome  the  obstacle  of  being 
a  human. 

At  night  he  seemed  phosphorescent,  the  dark  itself 
was  defeated  by  his  whiteness.  His  bark  was  low 
and  deep  and  resonant — a  church  bell  of  a  bark — it 
remainded  you  less  of  a  'cello  than  all  'cellos — ex- 
cept M.  Casal's — remind  you  of  a  bark. 

He  had  the  divine  irrelevant  grace  of  a  cat. 
Always  he  was  showing  off,  practising  his  paws, 
curling  and  stretching  and  pirouetting,  letting  him- 
self go  like  an  arrow  out  of  a  bow,  circling  on  the 
lawn  like  a  swallow  above  water,  giving  you  daily 
a  thousand  illustrations  of  how  much  you  would 


164  BALLOONS 


have  lost  by  only  having  100  masterpieces  in  bronze 
of  him. 

Living  with  Fido  was  a  daily  revelation  of  abso- 
lute beauty.  He  was  the  key  to  the  secret  of 
Phidias  and  Ucello  Pascal  and  Mozart. 

But  he  was  alive,  warm  and  gay  and  moody — 
joyous  and  absurd — full  of  little  confiding  gestures 
— a  nose  pressed  under  one's  chin,  or  a  paw  laid 
in  alluring  appeal  on  one's  hand.  Withal  he  was 
detached  with  the  detachment  of  his  separate  uni- 
verse— a  divine  world  of  smells  and  sounds  and  ever 
new  adventurous  possibilities,  unspoilt  by  memory 
and  untarnished  by  experience. 

Dogs  are  the  best  company  in  the  world — I  would 
watch  Fido  abandoning  himself  to  each  moment  of 
the  day,  the  victim  or  the  hero  of  a  hundred  im- 
pulses, torn  by  competing  smells  and  sounds  as  we 
are  torn  by  overlapping  warring  emotions  and 
ambitions. 

And  then  he  would  lie  sprawling  in  front  of  the 
fire  with  a  half  open  eye  and  when  you  said  "Fido" 
his  ears  would  answer  you,  taut  with  response,  while 
his  tail  would  beat  the  floor  in  indolent  happiness. 
Is  there  anything  in  life  so  infectiously  joyous  as  a 
wagging  tail*?  Worry,  distress,  crossness,  all  melt 
at  the  sight  of  it — a  hypnotic  conductor's  baton 
beating  the  rhythm  of  triumphant  joie  de  vivre. 

Fido  was  a  daily,  hourly  delight. 


FIDO    AND    PONTO  165 

I  would  shut  my  eyes,  to  be  able  to  open  them 
suddenly  and  realise — with  fresh  acuteness — his  in- 
finite variety.  There  was  to  me  something  poignant 
about  his  loveliness  like  an  open  rose  in  whose  very 
perfection  lies  the  herald  of  doom.  I  loved  him  too 
much.  The  cynical  masterpieces  of  the  past  looking 
at  his  beauty  smiled  in  satisfied  revenge  for  they 
knew  that  he  was  alive  and  that  life  means  death. 
Love  gives  mortality  to  everything. 

Fido  grew  limp  and  listless.  His  nose  was  hot 
and  dry.  He  no  longer  trotted  about,  he  wandered 
from  room  to  room.  His  eyes  were  dull.  His  heart 
bumped  about  like  money  in  a  money-box.  With 
an  effort  he  wagged  his  tail  to  cheer  me  up.  Wea- 
rily he  would  climb  into  a  chair  and  lie  there  in- 
different to  my  trembling  caresses. 

Fido  died. 

I  gave  up  looking  at  dogs,  alive  or  china,  em- 
broidered or  painted.  Fortunately  most  of  my 
friends  have  "pets,"  griffons  that  look  like  tropical 
spiders,  little  shiny  naked  shivering  animals, 
bloated  prosperous  Pekineses,  exuding  the  compla- 
cency of  their  mistresses  and  seeming  to  be  rather 
the  last  word  of  a  dressmaker,  or  a  furrier,  than  a 
creation  of  the  Gods. 

If  I  saw  a  sheepdog,  or  a  greyhound,  a  spaniel 
or  a  retriever,  I  would  avert  my  eyes,  shivering  a 


l66  BALLOONS 


little  as  when  the  hitherto  harmless  buzzing  ma- 
chine reaches  the  hidden  nerve. 

"Don't  you  like  dogs'?"  people  would  say. 

like! 

"No!"  I  would  answer. 

"How  strange.     I  adore  animals." 

ADORE  I 

Oh  the  verbs  of  the  untouched.  And  then,  in 
spite  of  everything,  because  of  everything,  a  Dal- 
matian once  more  invaded  my  life — the  life  that  I 
had  so  resolutely  determined  never  again  to  expose 
to  any  dog.  What  is  invulnerability  but  a  pis- 
aller?  Which  of  us,  given  the  choice  between  per- 
fect peace  and  imperfect  love  would  hesitate  for 
one  moment? 

When  Providence  gave  me  Ponto  I  accepted  him 
with  hungry  passion,  with  nervous  propitiatory 
prayers  to  the  Gods. 

He  was  a  stray  dog,  masterless  and  collarless,  an 
erring  emigre  of  civilisation  and  he  came  to  me.  At 
first  I  did  not  dare  look — my  heart  was  beating  so 
fast.  I  was  frightened  of  being  radiant.  I  was 
frightened  of  being  miserable. 

And  then  I  turned  to  him.  He  was  bigger  than 
Fido,  with  longer,  stronger  legs.  His  ears  were  not 
quite  black,  there  were  two  little  white  spots  on 
them,  his  eyes  were  not  set  in  pencilled  rims.  But 
he  was  beautiful,  as  beautiful  as  a  Greek  athlete — 


FIDO    AND    PONTO  167 

to  see  him  run  was  to  see  the  Olympic  games,  and 
in  the  house  he  would  curl  and  stretch  and  tangle 
up  his  paws,  and  put  his  head  on  my  lap  and 
reassure  me  with  his  eyes. 

Once  more  I  lived  with  motion  made  concrete, 
with  beauty  made  absolute — once  more  a  wagging 
tail  brought  the  inexhaustible  dot  of  gaiety. 

Ponto  had  finer  manners  than  Fido.  He  was  ma- 
turer,  with  a  deeper  sense  of  noblesse  oblige.  He 
never  forgot  that  even  if  he  had  been  bom  a  Dal- 
matian, privilege  entails  certain  obligations. 

Perhaps  he  lacked  something  of  Fido's  moody 
charm,  of  his  frivolous  pathos,  of  his  absurd  joyous- 
ness,  of  his  enchanting  vanity. 

Perhaps  it  was  just  Fido's  youth  that  he  lacked, 
and  his  irresponsibility.  There  was  a  certain  grav- 
ity about  Ponto — a  perfect  dignity.  His  fastidi- 
ousness had  gone  beyond  the  stage  of  selections, 
and  had  reached  the  stage  of  exclusions.  But  he 
never  lost  his  manners,  or  his  manner. 

Always  he  said  "Good-morning,"  and  "Good- 
night." If  I  was  embarrassed,  or  worried,  he  would 
pretend  not  to  notice  it,  but  if  I  was  happy,  or  sad, 
he  would  show  his  sympathy  in  a  hundred  ways — 
putting  his  head  on  my  lap,  or  cutting  absurd 
capers  to  distract  my  mind. 

And  then  one  day  I  went  away. 


l68  BALLOONS 


I  told  Ponto  when  I  said  good-bye  to  him  that  it 
would  be  some  time  before  I  saw  him  again. 

How  was  I  to  explain  partings  to  him?  The 
monstrous  role  that  geography  plays  in  our  lives'? 
I  just  told  him  that  I  loved  him,  that  his  image 
was  in  my  heart,  that  our  separation  was  only  the 
preparation  of  a  glorious  meeting  when  old-remem- 
bered delights  would  merge  into  newly  discovered 
ones. 

He  listened  to  me  while  I  stroked  his  heavy 
charmeuse  ears.  He  licked  my  hand,  knowing  that 
with  my  whispering  words,  I  was  trying  to  console 
myself  as  well  as  him. 

Then  I  left  him  quickly. 

They  wrote  to  me  that  he  had  disappeared. 

They  wrote  to  me  that  his  master  had  reclaimed 
him. 

But  I  know  that  he  is  mine. 

For  I  have  made  a  great  discovery. 

What  I  love  belongs  to  me.  Not  the  chairs  and 
tables  in  my  house,  but  the  masterpieces  of  the 
world. 

It  is  only  a  question  of  loving  theni  enough. 

THE   END 


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